can i completely delete and recreate my network interfaces?

[Robert P. J. Day]

  let's see if i can make a long story short.  for the sake of sheer
experimentation, i wanted to see if i could *totally* remove all
networking configuration from a gateway laptop running F8 x86_64, then
use system-config-network (henceforth, s-c-n) to recreate it from
scratch.

  the underlying hardware (from lspci):
...
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8036
PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller (rev 10)
...
08:07.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One
54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)
...

  so i went into s-c-n, removed all traces of network configuration
under both the Devices and Hardware tabs, saved that, removed the
lines from /etc/modprobe.conf:

  alias eth0 sky2          (um ... i think that's what it was)
  alias wlan0 b43	   (added previously by me for wireless)

i then unloaded the above modules from the system, and verified that
the directory /etc/sysconfig/networking/devices is utterly empty.  so
... should i be able to put stuff back?

  if i invoke s-c-n again, i'm not surprised to see both the Devices
and Hardware tabs totally empty.  so how could i recreate the wired
interface eth0?  if i try to add a new device of type "Ethernet
Connection", i'm given only a choice of "Other Ethernet Card", and i
don't see a corresponding entry for that ethernet controller.  should
i?  or am i going about this the wrong way?  what would be the correct
recipe to restore my eth0 interface?

  i have just as little success trying to restore the wlan0 wireless
interface, *until* i add the line

  alias wlan0 b43

back to /etc/modprobe.conf, at which point restoring the wireless
interface via s-c-n is a piece of cake (it even handles the access
point's WEP).

  so wireless is back, but still no wired interface eth0, although i'm
puzzled that the directory /etc/sysconfig/networking/devices now
contains three files:

ifcfg-eth0
ifcfg-wlan0
keys-wlan0

and ifcfg-eth0 contains:

# Intel Corporation PRO/100 VE Network Connection
DEVICE=eth0
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
HWADDR=00:E0:B8:BF:7C:3F
ONBOOT=yes
TYPE=Ethernet

  so what have i messed up?  is there, in fact, any way to restore
eth0?  thanks.

rday
--

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Robert P. J. Day
Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry
Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA

Home page:                                         http://crashcourse.ca
Fedora Cookbook:    http://crashcourse.ca/wiki/index.php/Fedora_Cookbook
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