What is the Ethernet driver in Ubuntu 12.10?

Question

I have been asked by the IT people at my work to uninstall and reinstall my Ethernet driver in order to try and fix a connection problem.

When looking in Software Centre, I find those packages when searching for the word "Ethernet":

Which package do you think I should uninstall and reinstall? And will it also disable my wireless connection? (i.e. Will I be able to reinstall the driver afterwards if I end up without Internet connection?)

Edit: here is the result of lspci -nnk | grep -iA2 net :

02:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x / AR542x Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) [168c:001c] (rev 01)
    Subsystem: Askey Computer Corp. Device [144f:7131]
    Kernel driver in use: ath5k
03:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8040 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller [11ab:4354] (rev 13)
    Subsystem: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd Device [144d:c052]
    Kernel driver in use: sky2

Solution

Here you go: "Kernel driver in use: sky2"

Uninstalling and reinstalling the driver is a tricky proposition as it's included by default in the kernel, known in Ubuntu as linux-image. You could simply unload it temporarily:

sudo modprobe -r sky2

And then reload it:

sudo modprobe sky2

If you really want to reinstall it, reinstall the entire linux-image:

sudo apt-get install --reinstall linux-image-`uname -r`

Those tickmarks are on the left side of my US keyboard on the same key with ~.

Then reboot.

Comments

[mikewhatever]

Ethernet drivers are usually built into the kernel, which makes it unlikely to appear in the Software Center, and rather hard to uninstall (will need to recompile the kernel). Obviously, there isn't just one Ethernet driver, each card model would have a different one. It looks like those IT guys are unfamiliar with Linux. Can you add the output of lspci -nnk | grep -iA2 net to the question.

[stragu]

Thanks for your answer. Out of interest, what is the difference between the two Ethernet controllers in my quote?

[chili555]

The Atheros is wireless and the marvelous Marvel is wired ethernet. Is that what you meant?