Ethernet card not supported VIA VT6122 Mandrake 10.1 community
 

Hi,

I've just installed my first Linux desktop, Mandrake 10.1 Community distribution.

Well... my motherboard, Abit NF7-S2G has an integrated VIA VT6122 Gigabit ethernetcard.

When I install mandrake 10.1 it recognizes this card as a VIA VT3119 Gigabit Ethernetdevice, which it is not, and when mandrake loads these drivers during booting, the computer hangs and fully stops responding.It doesn't even recover and tell me there is something wrong with the networkdevice, which I think it should've done.

Well... does anyone know how to install the drivers I've downloaded from via.com? There is just a bunch of .c, .h files, a Makefile and a Linux.txt file...

The Linux.txt file isn't very descriptive. It tells that you have to make a temp directory, unpack the file you downloaded (which you must have already done to read the document by the way), compile the files and load them into the kernel.

It's the last two steps I've trouble with, compiling and loading into the kernel.

I would really appreciate ANY answers... I'm stuck...

Tnx in advance...

Most people are disabling the onboard and putting a realtech card in.

You probably need to do "make" in that directory, then "insmod" the created module.

make not working
 

Tnx for the answer Matir. But when I type

"make" in the directory containing the driver sourcefiles, it reports:
"Makefile:16: *** Linux kernel source not found. Stop."

Any insight on that anyone? I did install the kernel source, the compilation tools and the documentation when I installed mandrake...

EDIT:
I guess it is ok to post a link to the drivers in question, since they are open source.

This seems to be the first 17 lines of the Makefile:
DEBUG = 0

KSP := /lib/modules/$(shell uname -r)/build \
/usr/src/linux-$(shell uname -r) \
/usr/src/linux-$(shell uname -r | sed 's/-.*//') \
/usr/src/kernel-headers-$(shell uname -r) \
/usr/src/kernel-source-$(shell uname -r) \
/usr/src/linux-$(shell uname -r | sed 's/\([0-9]*\.[0-9]*\)\..*/\1/') \
/usr/src/linux

test_dir = $(shell [ -e $(dir)/include/linux ] && echo $(dir))
KSP := $(foreach dir, $(KSP), $(test_dir))

KSRC := $(firstword $(KSP))
ifeq (,$(KSRC))
$(error Linux kernel source not found)
endif

Do you have the source code for your kernel in /usr/src/linux?

the only directory in /usr/src is RPM, so I guess the kernel is not located there... that might be the problem, but how do I locate the kernelsource and how do I let make know where it is? Or what do I do?

Having never used mandrake, I'm not quite sure how they handle package management, but most distros have a package like kernel-source or similar.

Found the RPM for the kernelsource and installed it (using rpmdrake).

Managed to compile the driver using make.
Got some .ko and .o files:
velocityget.ko
velocityget.o
velocityget.mod.o
velocityget_main.o
velocityget_proc.o
velocityget_wol.o

Tried to type insmod, but I got the answer:
Usage: insmod filename [args]

Now, what should I do? use insmod on each of these files?

What about "make install" what does that do?

make install will probably put the module in your standard module path (accessible with modprobe).

To use insmod, just do (from that directory) "insmod velocityget.ko"... if it is installed, "modprobe velocityget". .ko=kernel object.

Tnx for all your help, got it working now :D

Hi again...

Seems like I was wrong... I only got the card partly working. The network is disconnecting all the time and is extremely unstable.

I think the reason is because I wasn't able to install / configure Linux to use the correct driver. I suppose that mandrake uses the bundled driver for the VT3119 chip but when I made it use autoprobe and DHCP, it works. Once I try using manual settings for IP-adresses and DNS-servers and gateway, the computer hangs during boot up and I'm back to scratch.

The way I tried to install the driver:

logged in as root
extracted to a directory home/velocityget and entered the directory
typed make
make install
insmod velocityget.ko

(all completed successfully)

then I opened Harddrake (mandrakes hardware config tool), marked the network card, chose config tool, choose driver manually, chose VIA velocity VT3119 (which still was the only VIA velocity-cards in the list, chose ok and an autoprobe of the resources.

modprobe velocityget
gave no output

and lsmod still told me that no devices used the velocityget module.

velocityget unstable
 

My experience with the velocityget module/driver is also that it is unstable. I can use the network but it starts and stops working every second. This makes things very slow! It's almost as if the packets are coming in bursts. It works... it pauses... it works... it pauses. Again, it pauses every second... or less. I cannot view google without it pausing. When I boot to Windows XP the ethernet works fine and I can quickly browse the Internet without troubles. So I know it isn't my Internet connection or hardware.

I tried forcing the card into 10Mbps half-duplex mode. It did go to that mode, but that didn't help. I thought maybe it was trying to communicate at gigabit speeds with my 100Mbps switch.

Anyone have suggestions?

I got it to work... but I had to change to Fedora Core 3. It worked the second the FC3 installer had probed the network :D

So to all of u struggling with this problem. At least it works on Fedora Core 3...

All I experienced was that it does not work on Mandrake 10.1 - might work on a lot of other distros though...