Ethernet drivers under Debian and Ubuntu
 

Hi. I am trying to work out where the driver for my ethernet connection is under Ubuntu 10.4. Looking at the list in /dev I have no idea.

Reason is, I am trying to install Debian testing on a new machine, provided by employer, which has an onboard ethernet connection instead of a separate card. At installation, Debian just says it cannot find an ethernet connection and offers a list of drivers to choose from.

I have no idea what to choose so I thought I would install Ubuntu on the
same machine and get the driver from there.

The mboard is Intel DQ57TM

All help much appreciated ... Mcr

As it seems you should use the e1000e driver.

If you have problems that the netinstaller cannot find or initialize this driver, create a CD 1 of the complete Testing installation (the 650+ MB version) and try again.

jlinkels

Thanks. I'll try that and let you know.

I've tried that, thanks jlinkels, but no improvement.

Putting CD 1 of the full testing distro in, I get `No ethernet card was detected' and the
long list of drivers. Clicking on e1000e just returns me to the `No ethernet card was detected' screen.

I also tried with DVD 1 of testing, but same result.

I'm not a complete newbie, but I don't know much about hardware. But it looks to me as if debian doesn't know to look on the mboard for the card, rather than can't find the driver.

Maybe I should just go and buy a ethernet card and install that.

But if anyone knows how to get the onboard card to be recognized, I'd be really glad.

M

First step is to identify the exact ethernet controller. Either read the docs of the MB or run the below command (in bold).


Next step is to find the drivers.

//OOPS: just realised that you might not have access during the install to that command.

I have encountered problems like you have when installing. One thing that sometimes happens is that the installer doesn't know about a particular hardware, but either the installed OS does, or there are drivers available for download & installation post-install. In the case of an unsupported ethernet card, you may be able to temporarily install a PCI ethernet card, and use that for the installation. When you get to where you can run lspci, you should be able to determine the native ethernet type. You might see something earlier on if you can get to the kernel messages at boot time.
--- rod.

The "files" in the /dev directory aren't really "files" in the traditional sense. They're interfaces to actual, physical devices (or pseudo-devices) attached to your computer, that can be written to and read from like they're normal files. So, looking for driver information in /dev probably isn't gonna get you anywhere. ;)

Did you make sure that the on-board ethernet is enabled in your BIOS? If not, it won't be seen.

Thanks, first to Wim. I ran that command under Ubuntu 10.4 (which does recognize the onboard ethernet) and got

Does this help at all ?

The debian install doesn't get far enough to issue commands.

And thanks to tredegar. The bios, under

config > onboard devices >

has

On-board LAN [Enable]

greyed out. This seems very strange to me.

Mcr

if you're very desperate you could install Win 7 just to see what driver you need for your onboard ethernet.

After you find out what driver you need you can go about installing Debian on that computer.

If it s using the e100 or e1000 you need the firmware-linux-nonfree package.

or you can use the kmuto installer which comes with the firmware and a newer kernel.

For Debian Lenny installers with up-to-date kernels, see http://kmuto.jp/debian/d-i/ .

Ethernet "greyed out" in BIOS is weird.

I looked at your MoBo's PDF:
http://www.intel.com/support/motherb.../CS-030950.htm

It has "Active Management Technology" (Intel® AMT), and I'm pretty sure this needs to be turned on for the e1000e module to work.

If you search on e1000e firmware amt you'll see what I mean.

All is not lost though, as this page http://www.intel.com/support/motherb.../CS-031185.htm

says your MoBo is happy with ubuntu 9.10 and 10.04, but both need the e1000e driver from
http://sourceforge.net/projects/e1000/files
or as craigevil says, maybe a patched kernel will fix it for you.

HTH

Thanks. the kmuto site lenny-custom-0116 has worked. At least, it recognizes the ethernet. I still have to sort out some other problems. But the main one is dealt with now.

Thanks to everyone who replied. Everything helped.

Mcr