Detecting Acer Aspire Hardware on Debian 5.0.5

ColtraneFan89 · 09-02-2010, 03:03 PM

So, I'm browsing my HDD using Konqueror, and I've found /sys/module where there seems to be a folder for most of my hardware; stuff ranging from battery to cdrom, to the processor itself. I've also found /sys/bus/pci/drivers and sys/bus/. All of these seem like places where I would put a tg3 folder.

"cat /var/log/dmesg | grep broadcom" does absolutely nothing. It just gives me the prompt again.

And thanks for your support, I will definitely not give up.

(something I do need to know though, is will updating the OS to Squeeze (once I get the Debian 6 Bible with the install disc,) with the ethernet plugged into the PC during install likely to have the ethernet/eth0 detected for once I run the updated Debian?

ColtraneFan89 · 09-02-2010, 03:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rbees

Tigon3 seems to be the module(driver) for your card. It should be automatically detected and loaded on boot. That appears to not be happening. So the question is why not.

Look at the log files in /var/log mostly syslog, messages, dmesg, and boot if you have it. Examine them carefully and see if you can find a boot message that sheds some light on why the module is not getting loaded. Open a terminal (may need root) and run

cat /var/log/dmesg | grep broadcom

That should help narrow down your search. You can change the file name (dmesg) and the search keyword (boradcom) to different files and keywords to help find what you are looking for. If you get to many results and it scrolls off the screen you can append | less to the command and then you can scroll through it. | is a pipe, it is on the backslash key.

The reason that ifconfig does not work on eth0 for you is because the device eth0 is not in the system. When we get the module to load eth0 will show up when you run ifconfig.

Don't give up. We are rooting for you.

Just ran it without the grep and it worked! I am now trawling through it and will reply later!

EDIT: there's a bunch of stuff about PCI devices but no mention of Broadcom.

rbees · 09-02-2010, 04:33 PM

When you grep something and it returns empty that means that it did NOT find the search string. Try something else like warning, error, module, use your imagination. Look at the other files too.

Just a guess but I would think that running a Squeeze (debian 6) install should detect the hardware if you have a cable plugged into it. But it may not. If the pci definitions are out of date so it does not know what module to load for the hardware it won't.

You might, if you have, boot a live-cd of some kind (knoppix is usually good) and see if it detects the card. If it does then run lspci -vv that will give you lots of info about what driver and resources ever card in the system is using. You may need to pipe it through less to be able to read it. I think some linux install disks even let you drop into a shell where you could check.

You should be able to enable bootloging by editing /etc/default/bootlogd and changing BOOTLOGD_ENABLE=No to BOOTLOGD_ENABLE=Yes You may have to play with upper case / lower case if it does not work. Try yes and YES Not sure of the exact syntax.

ColtraneFan89 · 09-03-2010, 02:03 PM

I ran the dmesg line you recommended and grepped for "module" and "net" and this is what I got (I may open dmesg in nano and change the disabled netlink to enabled and then restart the PC with the ethernet from the router connected.):

Code:

[    1.611994] brd: module loaded
[   13.268012]  [<ffffffff802550cd>] sys_init_module+0x191b/0x1ab1
[   13.488232]  [<ffffffff802550cd>] sys_init_module+0x191b/0x1ab1
[   16.467402] loop: module loaded

^ grepping "module"

Code:

[    0.152009] net_namespace: 1224 bytes
[    1.470748] audit: initializing netlink socket (disabled)

^ grepping "net"

rbees · 09-04-2010, 08:16 PM

Quote:

I may open dmesg in nano and change the disabled netlink to enabled and then restart the PC with the ethernet from the router connected.

That won't change anything. Dmesg is just a log file of the messages that are sent by the kernel during operation. For instance enter dmesg | tail and it will show you the last few messages, then plug in a usb device of some kind wait a little ( 15 seconds or so) and run dmesg | tail again and it will show you just what the kernel reported when you plugged in the device and what it did with it.

So so far we have not discovered anything by looking at the log files. That is not all that uncommon but keep looking. Did you enable boot logging?

Try this command lspci -vv and find the section related to your broadcom cards and post it please. -vv will show alot of other information about the hardware and what the kernel loaded for them.

Stay with your google searches and keep reading. Some times your brain will put the info from several unrelated places together and lead you to the solution

On more that one occasion that is how I ended up solving my problems.