Another problem I faced today was the Ubuntu (debian) installer not finding the nics during install. I went ahead with the install and then tackled it afterward.
Once it was all installed and rebooted, I logged in and edited the /etc/network/interfaces file and put this in it:
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp
Boom, restart networking (/etc/init.d/networking restart), and you are good to go.
