Debian Sarge 3.1r0a won't work w/ nForce3 ethernet

haertig · 10-23-2005, 07:38 PM

I'm trying to get Debian Sarge 3.1r0a installed on a box with an nForce3 250Gb chipset (onboard ethernet). Default install with the 2.4 kernel does not detect ethernet at all. Using "linux26 netcfg/disable_dhcp=true" at the netinst CD boot prompt (to use the 2.6 kernel) gets past the bad network detection part.

Everything looked good until the first reboot into the basic system. Configuring apt failed. Network appeared dead. Indeed, the new Debian install couldn't ping any other LAN computer nor could they ping it. No hardware problems are present. If I dual-boot this new Debian install to Windows the network is fine. Both the Windows and Debian installs use the exact same static network configuration (same IP, netmask, CAT5 cable, router, etc.)

I'm not sure where to begin troubleshooting. See below for my initial steps.

One thing below puzzles me. In the dmesg output I see reference to "eth1". Everywhere else the reference is to "eth0". I'm not sure if this has meaning. Hopefully somebody can point me in a good troubleshooting direction. I'm fairly new to Linux, so specifics would help. Thanks!

[edit]

I forgot to include: lspci does not list any trace of ethernet.

Also: This same hardware has working ethernet if I boot Knoppix 3.9 or Ubuntu 5.10preview LiveCD. Also KnoppMyth (which I installed but recently deleted). I've had not-so-good luck with Debian SID in general, but at least I have been able get ethernet connectivity with it, if the daily build actually makes it that far before hanging on me. I'm thinking this leads to something in the older version of forcedeth included in kernel 2.6.8-2-386 included with Sarge, compared to newer versions in SID and the others. But I don't know how to isolate that, or fix it.

[/edit]

Code:

# dmesg | grep eth
ip1394: eth0: IEEE-1394 IPv4 over 1394 Ethernet (fw-host0)
forcedeth.c: Reverse Engineered nForce ethernet driver. Version 0.29.
eth1: forcedeth.c: subsystem: 01565:2501 bound to 0000:00:05.0


# cat /etc/network/interfaces
# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
	address 192.168.0.52
	netmask 255.255.255.0
	network 192.168.0.0
	broadcast 192.168.0.255
	gateway 192.168.0.1
	# dns-* options are implemented by the resolvconf package, if installed
	dns-nameservers 192.168.0.1
	dns-search home


# ifconfig
eth0      Link encap:UNSPEC  HWaddr 00-30-67-00-00-04-7D-2C-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00  
          inet addr:192.168.0.52  Bcast:192.168.0.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:315 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:11340 (11.0 KiB)

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:147 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:147 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:14292 (13.9 KiB)  TX bytes:14292 (13.9 KiB)


(I manually looked through /var/log/syslog and didn't see anything I thought
was relevent to networking.)

peter_robb · 10-24-2005, 01:28 PM

Looks like your Firewire is taking eth0 at boot.

Either delete it's module if you don't use it, or adjust your scripts to define eth1.

There's not enough info there to see how the firewire ethernet is being booted, so I can't be specific about how to disable it..

haertig · 10-24-2005, 09:26 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by peter_robb
Looks like your Firewire is taking eth0 at boot.

Either delete it's module if you don't use it, or adjust your scripts to define eth1.

There's not enough info there to see how the firewire ethernet is being booted, so I can't be specific about how to disable it..

Thanks for validating what I was suspecting, and suggesting I get rid of the Firewire stuff.

I got things working!

What I did was this:

First, I upgraded the kernel to 2.6.12 and tried again. Still the same problem with ethernet. However, upgrading to the newer kernel should fix my nForce3 vs. SATA problem, so it was one more step in the right direction.

To fix the ethernet problem, I blindly started poking around in /lib/modules to see what could be invoking that eth1394 driver. I found the reference in:

/lib/modules/2.6.12-1-686/modules.ieee1394map

Inside that file was a line that started with "eth1394..." I comment-ed that out and rebooted.

SUCCESS! As I'm typing this post on a spare Windows computer, my Debian box is busily downoading and installing the "Desktop environment". I'm not sure why eth1394 decided to pick on me for no good reason, but I got rid of it. I never plan to hook up any networking hardware to my Firewire port.

Thanks!

peter_robb · 10-25-2005, 04:45 AM

A lot of it has to do with the hardware order on the pci bus..
And coldplugging/hotplugging scripting..
And module autoloading order..

If you're not going to disable the onboard ethernet, I'd suggest compiling your next kernel with the nForce ethernet driver statically. That way it always gets to be first.