Missing NVidia Network driver

RedHat/CentOS is aggressively pruning drivers. On CentOS 7 there is no longer forcedeth driver for NVidia Network card. In my case I have:

• CentOS-7-x86_64-Minimal-1708.iso (but CentOS-7-x86_64-DVD-1708.iso is same)
• NVidia network card - output of lspci

  ...
  

How I resolve it:

• install CentOS without network (for example from above "minimal" ISO)
• on other PC download all kmod-forcedeth drivers from http://elrepo.org/linux/elrepo/el7/x86_64/RPMS/
• copy them to Floppy (or USB stick if you have no floppy).

  NOTE: ensure that your are NOT using NTFS on USB stick (CentOS has no NTFS driver)

• in your CentOS look on /lib/modules directory to see what kernel you use. In my example:

  3.10.0-693.el7.x86_64
  

• list contents of all RPMS to see which contains same directory:

  for i in *.rpm;do echo -e "\n$i:\n";rpm -qlp $i;done
  ...

• install appropriate kernel - in ma case:

  rpm -ivh kmod-forcedeth-0.64-3.el7.elrepo.x86_64.rpm

• load module

  modprobe forcedeth

• list kernel messages using dmesg - there should be notes about detected network card(s)
• run nmtui (Network Manager Text User Interface) to configure your network card.

Done

Footnotes

I really don't understand why RedHat/CentOS removed 1GBit ethernet card driver forcedeth from base Server distributions. On other side there are many much better (and funny!) candidates for removal:

• floppy - floppy driver
• parport - parallel port driver
• pcspkr - PC Speaker driver
• ivtv-firmware - Firmware for the Hauppauge PVR 250/350/150/500/USB2 model series who needs this on server distribution?!
• and many many more...