Odd ethernet connundrum.

Marajin · n00b Joined: 03 Sep 2002 Posts: 62 Location: England

I recently put together Gentoo 1.4_RC4 box. It's an Athlon XP2200+ and all sorts of spiffy stuff, with an onboard ethernet controller....

Now the live CD was more than happy to pick it up, DHCP config 'n all and away I go on the 8139too module... I get to compiling my own kernel and shove it in, and plan to boot from gentoo itself instead of it's CD..

The Ethernet fails to come up. I prod the modules and ifconfig and it's seeing the card and loading the module without complaint, yet I can't get it to actually talk. Running dhcpcd in debug mode just tells me the mac address and naught else and I'm honestly stumped as to what's wrong.

I have vague ideas that I may have boo-boo'd something in the kernel or the CFLAGs are causing and issue, but the system seems to work just find otherwise.... I'm more than sure the network is up, the card works and the connection is peachy (Checked on the same machine using the live CD /and/ windowsXP/2003, also checked the connection with a totally different machine running Mandrake Linux 9.1 and Windows XP, all worked just fine...)

Has anyone ever heard of this before or have a clue where I might start looking for issues?

Edit: Btw, I've tried the Local APIC issue, this did nothing...
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2.4Ghz P4 Laptop, 512Meg DDR, 40G drive, Radeon 9000, Gentoo!

1.8Ghz Athlon XP2200+ Desktop, 512Meg DDR, 60G drive, GeForceFX5600, WinXP

1.65Ghz Athlon XP2000+ Server, 512Meg DDR, Dual 120G drives, Sis onboard Graphics, Gentoo!

Hellzone · Apprentice Joined: 23 May 2003 Posts: 167

When your actually in the system try typing:

Marajin · n00b Joined: 03 Sep 2002 Posts: 62 Location: England

Not a hope.

I've already tried this several times, sorry if I didn't make it so obvious in my original post. I've also tried using the LiveCD to get a connection, then installing other DHCP clients, rebooting and trying them, but considering even static IPs don't work I think it's somewhat more sinister than a dicky DHCP client.

I really do not get this. I've installed Gentoo a dozen times over on several different computers from 1.2 to this current 1.4_RC4 and I've never had a problem remotely like this....

But thanks for your help, by the way.
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2.4Ghz P4 Laptop, 512Meg DDR, 40G drive, Radeon 9000, Gentoo!

1.8Ghz Athlon XP2200+ Desktop, 512Meg DDR, 60G drive, GeForceFX5600, WinXP

1.65Ghz Athlon XP2000+ Server, 512Meg DDR, Dual 120G drives, Sis onboard Graphics, Gentoo!

FlankerPhil · n00b Joined: 29 Apr 2003 Posts: 7 Location: Birmingham, UK

Its not your gateways is it? I got into a problem where it though i was on the net and the reason it didnt work was cause all the gateways were nessed up? try:

Marajin · n00b Joined: 03 Sep 2002 Posts: 62 Location: England

I somehow doubt this, it's not even capable of getting the internal network up and running. ifconfig just shows eth0 as present but totally unconfigured. No UP and RUNNING in there, no IPs nuffink.

As I said earlier, even feeding it a static IP is a nada. Can't ping or anything
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2.4Ghz P4 Laptop, 512Meg DDR, 40G drive, Radeon 9000, Gentoo!

1.8Ghz Athlon XP2200+ Desktop, 512Meg DDR, 60G drive, GeForceFX5600, WinXP

1.65Ghz Athlon XP2000+ Server, 512Meg DDR, Dual 120G drives, Sis onboard Graphics, Gentoo!

burmashave · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 01 Dec 2002 Posts: 82

I had the same problem when I installed gentoo. The problem turned out to be the NIC driver. As I recall, the card came up fine while using the live CD, but then didn't work when I initially booted. I then went back to the live CD to see what driver it had either automatically detected or used. For me, the DEC tulip driver worked despite the fact that I I had originally found a better match in the NIC list.

Marajin · n00b Joined: 03 Sep 2002 Posts: 62 Location: England

8139too and mii are the modules that the LiveCD loaded, and 8139too and mii are the modules I'm loading at bootup....
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2.4Ghz P4 Laptop, 512Meg DDR, 40G drive, Radeon 9000, Gentoo!

1.8Ghz Athlon XP2200+ Desktop, 512Meg DDR, 60G drive, GeForceFX5600, WinXP

1.65Ghz Athlon XP2000+ Server, 512Meg DDR, Dual 120G drives, Sis onboard Graphics, Gentoo!

Marajin · n00b Joined: 03 Sep 2002 Posts: 62 Location: England

Hrm, after lots of reading around I accidentally found out that sometimes disabling ACPI can cause the ethernet to work when it was doing what mine is doing...

guess what?

acpi=off did exactly that. Gentoo picked up the card and DHCP configured it at bootup /instantly/

I'm rather annoyed at that though. Why has ACPI gotta be off? is this a kernel version specific bug?
_________________
2.4Ghz P4 Laptop, 512Meg DDR, 40G drive, Radeon 9000, Gentoo!

1.8Ghz Athlon XP2200+ Desktop, 512Meg DDR, 60G drive, GeForceFX5600, WinXP

1.65Ghz Athlon XP2000+ Server, 512Meg DDR, Dual 120G drives, Sis onboard Graphics, Gentoo!

Marajin · n00b Joined: 03 Sep 2002 Posts: 62 Location: England

OOokay, this is really not making sense now. I rebooted and the ethernet won't work anymore. Ran through everything again, but it doesn't work anymore
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2.4Ghz P4 Laptop, 512Meg DDR, 40G drive, Radeon 9000, Gentoo!

1.8Ghz Athlon XP2200+ Desktop, 512Meg DDR, 60G drive, GeForceFX5600, WinXP

1.65Ghz Athlon XP2000+ Server, 512Meg DDR, Dual 120G drives, Sis onboard Graphics, Gentoo!

Pondus · n00b Joined: 28 May 2003 Posts: 3

I have the same problem. Realtek 8139 NIC. When I boot the Gentoo Live-cd, it loads the 8139too module, and the NIC gets ip from dhcp. I can use the internet.

When I boot from harddisk, it fails to contact the dhcp-server, and eth0 fails to start. If i assign network parameters manually in the /etc/conf.d/net, eth0 succsessfully loads, and get an ip-address. It also says UP and RUNNING, but I cant ping anything. Ping gives me this:

Pinging (192.168.1.1) 56 octets data: (if I remember correctly)
(nothing more happens)
--
When I press CTRL+C, it says:
x packets sent, 0 recieved (100% loss)

I tried both compiling the driver in the kernel, and loading it as a module. Both ways give the same result.

Then I noticed that the NIC gets different IRQ and BASE-adress settings. When I boot with cd, it gets IRQ=10 BASE=0x700. When I boot from harddisk it gets IRQ=17 BASE=0xd700.

Could this be it? If so, how do I set these manually?
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Pondus

Pondus · n00b Joined: 28 May 2003 Posts: 3

I may have found a solution here:

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=53755&highlight=netmount

Seems you have to disable 'Local APIC support on uniprocessors' in the kernel, to get 8139too working.

(I haven't been able to test it, as I am not home atm)

Edit: Just noticed in your post that you allready tried this..

I hope it works for me...
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Pondus

Marajin · n00b Joined: 03 Sep 2002 Posts: 62 Location: England

Pondus · n00b Joined: 28 May 2003 Posts: 3

I am pretty sure it said 17, but I'm gonna check it as soon as I get home..

How do I force it to use another IRQ?
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Pondus

Marajin · n00b Joined: 03 Sep 2002 Posts: 62 Location: England

AFAIK, if it's PnP PCI style stuff then you can't. It just gets it from the BIOS.....

Mine however is on interrupt 11 so that's not the issue..
_________________
2.4Ghz P4 Laptop, 512Meg DDR, 40G drive, Radeon 9000, Gentoo!

1.8Ghz Athlon XP2200+ Desktop, 512Meg DDR, 60G drive, GeForceFX5600, WinXP

1.65Ghz Athlon XP2000+ Server, 512Meg DDR, Dual 120G drives, Sis onboard Graphics, Gentoo!

Marajin · n00b Joined: 03 Sep 2002 Posts: 62 Location: England

Hmmph...I noticed it WAS still loading ACPI stuff (thereby /ignoring/ the kernel line commands I was passing it...so I just recompiled my kernel without ACPI...the card is now working again)
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2.4Ghz P4 Laptop, 512Meg DDR, 40G drive, Radeon 9000, Gentoo!

1.8Ghz Athlon XP2200+ Desktop, 512Meg DDR, 60G drive, GeForceFX5600, WinXP

1.65Ghz Athlon XP2000+ Server, 512Meg DDR, Dual 120G drives, Sis onboard Graphics, Gentoo!

Beekster · Apprentice Joined: 26 Nov 2002 Posts: 268 Location: Sydney