Installing Ethernet Drivers on Installation Media

[xevra]

Hello!

I have thusfar been unsuccessful in accessing the internet on any bootable media from my new computer.

I have installed gentoo on a few broken laptops in the past month or two (from the minimum install CD), but am otherwise fairly new. I had no trouble configuring dhcpcd, sshd, or openRC on those devices.

This computer is a newly assembled a desktop computer, and I think the problem is that I am missing a driver for Ethernet connection.

The machine is connected to the same ethernet cable these other machines were connected to, and to the same port on the router.

My motherboard did not come with a manual, so I am never buying from Gigabyte again, but moreover: here's what I have tried so far (also apologies; I cannot copy/paste, so I am copying these by hand):
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Running

[bent]

try and

[xevra]

Thanks for the suggestion,

I tried this on both the minimal install and the liveCD. No new devices appear in `ip link`

Also, on a fresh boot of the minimal install, I ran:

[bent]

Hm, I saw somewhere the 8125 should work under the 8169 driver. Sorry, that's all I've got.
_________________
Back on the G after 15 years on the Cupertino Kool-aid

[xevra]

Ah, that's okay. Thanks for trying to help!

Maybe someone else will come along.

[Hu]

Welcome to the forums. I think it is unusual for lspci to report the kernel module for a network device, but then ip link not to show it. Is there anything relevant in dmesg noting that the kernel found your card? I wonder if your card needs firmware, and without the firmware, is not functional enough for ip link to report it.

[xevra]

Hi, and thank you!

I'm not sure how to interpret *dmesg*, but here are some lines I think are relevant (because the numbers 8125 and 8922 match the ethernet and network devices, and because 6:00 and 7:00 match those devices in the *lspci* call):

[pietinger]

This is your motherboard:
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/f75d1fbe7809bc5ed134204b920fd9e2fc5db1df

Try to boot with a 6.13.1 kernel. If this does not work you really need 6.14.
_________________
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/User:Pietinger

[NeddySeagoon]

xevra,

[xevra]

Thank you both for the information, suggestions, and links.

Fortunately, it seems like it will be easier to sneakernet with a USB than optical disks, and I have another machine with a working Gentoo installation (along with portage).

The pull request seems to suggest that version 6.13 of the kernel may be new enough, and again, quite fortunately, there is both a distribution kernel and a binary for version 6.13.1 (though they are considered to be in testing).

If I am understanding you correctly, then I will be completing most of the installation of the operating system (from the Stage 3 tarball to boot) in sneakernet mode. This means that each package I need to install along the way will need to be copied onto the USB stick.

There are steps in the handbook I will need to skip (the emerge-websync, setting up cron, etc...) until after I boot.

I will need to sneakernet many files for emerge to work properly.

Following you instructions in the other thread, I can

[NeddySeagoon]

xevra,

You don't need many files.

A portage snapshot.
A Stage 3
A kernel - 6.13.x
A boot loader is optional but advised - say grub.
efibootmgr will be good too, to point your firmware at your Gentoo.

If you build your own kernel, no initrd is required unless you need user space tools to expose the root filesystem, or have /usr and or /var on their own partitions.
Going this way means that everything required to mount root must be built into the kernel.

If you want a dracut or genkernel initrd, than you need all the userspace sources that they will want to install.

What you said is essentially correct.

== edit ==

Gentoo only stabilises LTS kernels. There is too much testing to do to do more than that, so don't worry about the Gentoo testing status of 6.13.x
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[freke]

[xevra]

[NeddySeagoon]

xevra,

There is only one stupid question. That's the one you never ask. You never know the answer.

It used to be in the handbook. Snapshots are posted to https://distfiles.gentoo.org/snapshots/ You will want portage-latest.tar.xz or portage-latest.tar.bz2.
You could even cheat an use the copy of the ::gentoo repo on your existing Gentoo install.
Paranoid users can check the gpgsig too.

That takes the place of websync

[xevra]

NeddySeagoon,

Thank you for your thoughtful answers!

I have unpacked a stage 3 tarball on my machine, and copied over portage-latest.tar.xz

I don't know how to install it.

I attempted to do:

[NeddySeagoon]

xevra,

Its been a long time since /usr/portage was the default path fro the ::gentoo repo.
You have two choices.

1. Unpack it to the location given in

[xevra]

NeddySeagoon,

Thank you for helping me find the location where those files belong.

I was able to move them, and to read the news using eselect news read.

However, when I now run emerge -fp sys-kernel/gentoo-sources, I get this error:

[NeddySeagoon]

xevra,

[xevra]

NeddySeagoon,

Having done this, I still get the same error message running emerge -fp sys-kernel/gentoo-sources.

Hold on, the packages are right there in the error message. I discovered this by trying to emerge -fp app-editors/vim, and noticed that I got a different number of error messages.

With this in mind, I added ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" to my make.conf, following the handbook, and ran the command again:

[NeddySeagoon]

xevra,

Yes, you need exactly one copy of each file.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[pietinger]