One update too far - help

[Bob Gustafson <bobgus rcn com>]

I managed to download and yum update this morning, however:

When I boot:
  I see lots of mod_ins segment faults. Seems to be that the arguments to
mod_ins are illformed.

My network is not ifup after the boot. Moreover, when I do the little trick:

/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifup eth0

there is a complaint that eth0 does not exist.

if I do /sbin/ifconfig I only see the lo device.

----

To get more updates, I need a network.

What is the best way to proceed manually to bring up eth0 so I can contact
the outside world.  (My inside world too - cannot contact this machine
either).

System is i686 smp scsi ipv4 - smp538 kernel.

BobG