Where can I find network devices in Linux? Where is a device manager (redhat enterprise linux)?

Question

I like to know where I can find network devices (eth0, wlan0, etc) as I could not find them under /dev even when ifconfig reported both eth0 & wlan0

Related but different question is how i can find information that MS windows devices manager provides, and what is the process of installing devices that are not installed correctly?

thank you

Solution 1

Try:

ls -l /dev/.udev/db/net*

Commands that provide device information include:

• lsusb
• lshw
• lspci
• lscpu
• lshal

Installing and configuring devices depends on what the device is.

Solution 2

If you want to know just the names of the net devices, type:

cat /proc/net/dev

You get the names, e.g. 'lo', 'eth0', etc. plus some traffic stats as well.

Solution 3

You'll find devices under /sys/devices.

As for device installation, dmesg is the command you're after. That provides an output of what's happening on the system, though not in the simple way that Windows does.

Solution 4

To list all configured networks, use ifconfig -a

Next, you'll need to know which devices were found during boot. You can use dmesg or look into /var/log/boot.msg (this is a dump of the dmesg output early after the hardware detection ran).

If the device isn't there, check what lcpci tells you. That command lists all PCI devices connected to the BUS. If the device isn't there, there is a problem with the connection. If it is there, then use the device name to Google for the driver. Most often, the kernel will select the correct driver but sometimes, the driver is wrong. In this case, you need lsmod (list active drivers), rmmod (unload drivers at runtime) and modprobe (load a driver at runtime).

If you found the driver, load it manually with modprobe. If it works, add the line to /etc/init.d/boot.local. If you have a driver conflict, add the name of the driver which you don't want to the /etc/modprobe.d/00-blacklist like so:

blacklist drivername

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Comments

[mctylr]

dmidecode is another utility for info on motherboard, BIOS, and various other components including RAM and CPU.