Nforce2 Dual Ethernet Driver Not Loading forcedeth on Puppy 2.12

dopper · 02-09-2007, 06:55 AM

You last visited: 05-07-04 at 07:16 AM (Wow it's been a while!!!)

The Asus A7N8X-E motherboard has the following ethernet adapters built into it:

-Marvell Yukon Gigabit Ethernet 10/100/1000Base-T Adapter, Copper RJ-45
-NVIDIA nForce MCP Networking Controller

It's incorrectly auto detecting 8139too and when I specify the forcedeth module via the network wizard, that's not working either.

I tried:
sh-3.00# rmmod forcedeth
ERROR: Module forcedeth does not exist in /proc/modules

My distro: Muppy-006 (puppy 2.12 derivative)
Linux Kernel: 2.6.18.1

Is there a way to download/install forcedeth via cmd line for this version of linux?

from Nvidia download page:

Quote:

Supported Distributions:
* SLES 9 SP3 (2.6.5-7.244)
* SLES 9 SP2 (2.6.5-7.191)
* SLES 10 (2.6.16.21)
* RHEL 3 UP7 (2.4.21-40)
* RHEL 4 UP3 (2.6.9-34)
* RHEL 4 UP4 (2.6.9-42)
* Fedora Core 5 (2.6.15-1)
* RHEL 4 UP2 (2.6.9-22)
* RHEL 3 UP6 (2.4.21-37)
* RHEL 3 UP8 (2.4.21-47)
* SuSE 10 (2.6.13-15)

Ideally I'd like to get both NIC's working but even getting 1 to work would be a good start.

squisher · 02-10-2007, 02:48 PM

If it incorrectly auto-detects 8139too, then you should run:

Quote:

ifconfig eth0 down
rmmod 8139too
modprobe forcedeth

That will first turn off your network device, then unload the 8139too driver, and load the correct one for the Marvell chipset.

dopper · 02-11-2007, 04:03 PM

Thank you for the suggestion. However, it didn't work. Is it possible to use the forcedeth drive from nvidia.com and load it? I noticed puppylinux isn't a supported distro and I'm not sure how to go about setting it up.

Code:

sh-3.00# ifconfig
lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

sh-3.00# ifconfig eth0 down
SIOCGIFFLAGS: No such device
sh-3.00# rmmod 8139too
sh-3.00# modprobe forcedeth
FATAL: Module forcedeth not found.

squisher · 02-11-2007, 04:57 PM

I have no clue about the drivers from nvidia.com. If you can install it, give it a shot - why not.

forcedeth should be part of any decent kernel (it is included in the normal kernel sources), so I don't know why your Puppy/Muppy linux does not seem to include it.

I've never heard of that distribution. Maybe you should try a more mainstream one (Debian, OpenSUSE, Redhat etc...), all of which I'm sure include the driver by default.

dopper · 02-11-2007, 06:32 PM

It's a Live CD and Multi-Session CD/DVD distro running kernel 2.6.18.1 and it's comparable to damn small linux.

The installers from nvidia are only available for the supported distro's I mentioned above however it does include a source dir with the following files:

forcedeth.c
sata_nv.c

Quote:

2) Miscellaneous
=================================================================
2.1) If need compile the sata_nv.ko file from source we provided with your Makefile, please make sure
the necessary Kernel header files ('scsi.h','scsi_typedefs.h','scsi_obsolete.h') are copied from
the Kernel source directory. (For RFC5, refer to "http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/linux-ntfs/kernel-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5.src.rpm" for kernel source package)
For forcedeth.ko, just copy the forcedeth.c and Makefile to same directory then make it.

2.2) List the driver modules for your information:
sata_nv.ko: nVidia SATA controller driver, locate at /lib/modules/2.6.15-1.2054_FC5/kernel/drivers/scsi/
forcedeth.ko: nVidia LAN controller driver, locate at /lib/modules/2.6.15-1.2054_FC5/kernel/drivers/net/

I'm assuming this means on my system I run makefile forcedeath.c and the file will forcedeath.ko will be created in /lib/modules/2.6.18.1/net/ ? The 2 files above are for fedora core 5 so I'm not sure if the source files work with other distros of if it's kernel specific?

I'm not familiar with driver installations on linux or compiling the kernels but I don't believe I can do that anyhow on the puppy distro since this is a frugal install of a live distro. Also makefile isn't included. Oh well thanks for all your help anyhow. I found a forum post with another version of puppy that apparently works properly with forcedeth so I'll give that a try and see if there's a way to grab the working files from it.

dopper · 02-12-2007, 07:59 AM

Thank you for your suggestions squisher. I have discovered the answer and fixed the problem.

Quote:

There are two iso files, puppy-2.12-seamonkey-zdrv.iso (83.1MB) and puppy-2.12-seamonkey.iso (68.0MB). The former has the zdrv_212.sfs file in it, which is a massive collection of kernel drivers and firmware, whereas the latter has a cutdown selection of drivers on a par with previous Puppies (but the zdrv_212.sfs file can be downloaded separately and Puppy will have automatic access to all of the extra drivers).

On my system the zdrv_212.sfs was corrupt and had a 0 (zero) byte file size. I replaced that file with the one from the live cd and both ethernet adapters were auto detected at next boot and the proper modules auto loaded.