[Lilux-help] Loading kernel module on boot not working on debian

Hi all, A server I installed at a friends office got the latest linux kernel, because we wanted to set up a VPN. The machine runs a Debian (Knoppix) distribution. We did'nt change anything to the hardware and also the new kernel is working just fine. A few days ago my friend had to reboot the machine and he noticed that eth0 wouldn't come up again. At his office I typed "modprobe via-rhine" and "/etc/init.d/networking restart" and the network was working again. So I thought that the module wasn't configured to be loaded automatically at boot. I verified the file /etc/modules, which is responsible for module loading at boot time and I noticed that there was indeed an entry for via_rhine (on board NIC). But after reboot the problem remains the same, the module isn't loaded (lsmod) and manually modprobing works. So I added a script with a modprobe line to /etc/init.d/ and a sysmlink to it in rc2.d also with no result !! I also tried to add an alias eth0 via_rhine to /etc/modutils/aliases and did a modules-update. This is all really strange, since we didn't change anything to the configuration except the new kernel and before that the server worked seemlessly by just flipping the power switch. So what is it that I missed? Best greetings