Cannot connect to LANs - ifconfig and iwconfig show no devices
 

Hi,

I've been using Linux for a couple of years now, but this is the first time I've ever had to do anything like deal with hardware etc.. I've also read as much online material about my problem as I can, with no success. So I'm a sort of psuedo-n00b!

I've just got a new Samsung R522 laptop. It has the following network cards:

Marvell Yukon 88E8057 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller

Realtek RTL8192E Wireless LAN 802.11n PCI-E NIC

These devices both work fine in Windows.

I've just dual-booted the machine with Scientific Linux 5.4. If you haven't heard of it before, Scientific Linux is a derivative of Enterprise Linux, which uses Fedora / Red Hat. It has the 2.6.18 kernel, with x86_64 architecture.

Unfortunately, I can't get either network card to work. This means I can't connect to a LAN, either hard-wired or wirelessly.

Here is the output of "/sbin/lspci"

Here is the output of "/sbin/ifconfig"

And the output of "/sbin/iwconfig"

And the output of "/sbin/lsmod"

I've attempted to install the drivers for the network devices. In the cases of the Marvell ethernet NIC, I've used the driver (sk98lin) from this website:

http://www.marvell.com/drivers/drive...o?driverId=153

For the Realtek wireless device, I've tried to install a Windows driver using ndiswrapper, which was installed with the OS. Both drivers "appeared" to install correctly. Unfortunately nothing has changed.

The command "/usr/sbin/ndiswrapper -l"

The output of "dmesg | grep ndiswrapper" is

The output of "dmesg | grep sk98lin" is

(yes, that's an empty return from that last command.)

Here's the really interesting thing! The "system-config-network" tool lists both devices, as "eth0" (the Marvell device) and "eth1" (the Realtek device), BUT, if I try to activate either device, they say the "device does not seem to be present, delaying initialization".

If anyone can offer any help, give me any ideas how I can get EITHER network device to work, and connect to my LANs, I'd be very, very grateful.

This has been driving me crackers for a couple of weeks now, and I need to get it sorted it ASAP. I've been trying to follow the user guides both here and elsewhere, but to no-avail.

Thanks for any help!

Can you do hwinfo --netcard

Thanks

May be wrong driver is assigned to yoor hardware. Recompiling kernel with proper driver may solve your problem.

Thanks

nimnull22 and vishesh, thanks for your replies! Now I'm really going to show how little I know about all this:

vishesh, I'm not sure how to recompile my kernel, or if it's even possible in Scientific Linux (SL). I'm not even sure of the SL kernel source is available, (see here ). Could you expend a little on what you said, please?
EDIT - would it be advisable to upgrade my kernel? I've read that the latest kernel (2.6.32 I believe) might offer support for either or both of my network controllers. Do you think this is worth a try? If so, can I use any kernel, e.g. from www.kernel.org? I'm willing to try upgrading my kernel, despite my inexperience.


nimnull22, I'll paste up the results of "hwinfo --netcard" ASAP.

Thanks again for your help!

hi again, nimnull22.

I looked for the hwinfo, as you asked, except I couldn't find the command in my system - it returns

Furthermore, I looked for any file "hwinfo" using the "locate" feature, but nothing was returned. I have several other "hw"-like commands, e.g. "/usr/bin/hwbrowser", which brings up the hardware browser which has a network devices section. This shows:

I've tried "ifconfig" again, but it still just returns the "lo" device.

Any thoughts?

Thanks.

02:00.0 Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Unknown device 8192 (rev 01)
06:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. Unknown device 4380 (rev 10)

This not good.


Scientific Linux is a derivative of Enterprise Linux, which uses Fedora / Red Hat.
In this case check if you have "lshw" utility, but I have no idea how to use it. If you do not have it, try to find rpm with it.

If you installed sk98lin driver for ethernet, you can find out is it loaded or not by "lsmod |grep sk98".
Tell us please exact name of the ethernet driver. Also (if you have) you can use "modinfo <name_of_the_driver>" utility.
So if driver is called sk98lin, use modinfo sk98lin, from root console.

OK, after much soul searching, kernel searching, and much, much anger, I've decided upon the following workaround for my problem:

* my distro is Scientific Linux 5.4, which is based on the 2.6.18 kernel (released I believe in Feb 2007).

* the newest kernel is the 2.6.32 kernel, released in Nov 2009.

* it seems the older kernels do not support the most recent hardware. This would make sense, if not solve my problem.

* after about 5 botched attempts to upgrade my kernel in Scientific Linux, I've instead switched distro's to Fedora 12, which comes with the 2.6.31 kernel, which DOES support my Marvell Yukon ethernet card. I can now access LANs through a hard-wired connection! Although this kernel does support the RTL8192 wireless controller, it does not support the RTL8192e, which mine is. Apparently the 2.6.32 kernel does have support for this RTL8192e wireless controller.

If anyone can explain to me why the guys at Scientific Linux are using a kernel that is ostensibly 3 years out of date, I'd be interested. Also, if anyone can give me tips on

(a) getting my Fedora 12 to connect to wireless networks with me RTL8192e wireless card, or

(b) easily upgrade my kernel to 2.6.32 in Fedora 12,

I'd be very grateful!

Linux Commands To Check Network Connection

http://funlinuxfun.blogspot.com/ http://funlinuxfun.blogspot.com http://funlinuxfun.blogspot.com

lsof vs netstat – which of these two Linux networking commands works better, if you want to find out which Linux networking program is running on or openning a TCP/IP network port? Take a look on these commands output, you might get the answer then.



Netstat is almost a generic networking command, although its functions or features might be varied across the diverse system platforms. The Linux netstat command is used to check or print the TCP/IP network activities of both active (established) and inactive (listening) ports. You can tweak the netstat command with its supported option switches for more useful TCP/IP network statistics.

I used to run netstat -tulpan on both Redhat and Debian Linux servers for network-related support calls. These netstat command option switches will tell me what a networking program is doing – the TCP/IP protocol in used (TCP / UDP), number of bytes dropped, local network port and its connected port at remote server (established) or local listening port of the daemon (server), the name and process ID of the networking program.

Today, however, I couldn’t find an in-house developed daemon (which we call it XML-Server) with my favourite netstat -tulpan command!

As shown in the diagram, login with root user ID and executing command netstat -tulpan | grep 2020 shows that the network port 2020 is opened and listening for connection, but the XML-Server program is unknown. When grep network port number 389, I can see the Open-LDAP daemon as well as its associated process ID in the list. (So, I’ve login as root and only root user privilege can run netstat with -p option to print all networking utilities that are running on the Linux system!).

After googling, I learnt a new Linux command. Essentially, lsof is another great Linux command used to print or find out the system resources that are currently using or holding by Linux processes!

Now, executing lsof -i | grep 2020 or lsof -i | grep xmlserver is showing me the XML-Server daemon and its process ID. Then, I can issue kill -9 command to kill off XML-Server program as part of the troubleshooting process.

Of course, I can simple run ps -elf | grep xmlserver to get the process ID and kill it. But, what if you only know the network port but not the program name, or the network port and program are both being unknown?!
http://funlinuxfun.blogspot.com
http://funlinuxfun.blogspot.com
http://funlinuxfun.blogspot.com