network cards

> Well, another newbie plight for me.  I am setting up a linux firewall that
> has two Linksys Etherfast 10/100 NIC's in it.  I was not asked to set them
> up during the install however.  If I do cat /proc/pci    I see them just
> fine.  I tried to create my own /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ethX
> file but to no avail.  I then appended lilo.conf with the IRQ's and IO for
> my cards but still no good.  Every time it tries to bring up the interfaces
> it says "No such device.  Error fetching interface:Device not found"  I even
> went into linuxconfig and added the IRQ's and IO's for the cards.  I am
> using the tulip.o module.  Do I need to recompile my kernel before I use the
> module?  tulip.o  is listed in my /lib/modules/curentkernelversion/net dir.
> Is there a better way to set up new network cards under linux??  Thanks for
> the newbie help in advance.