Gentoo 2004.3 + PCI-Express network problem

**Zer0** · 01-13-2005

Hello

I'm having major difficulties getting Gentoo Live (Universal) 2004.3 to recognise my onboard network hardware. I'm quite sure that the live-cd doesn't contain the drivers for this PCIe puppy, but I have the drivers themselves (which I obtained from the manufacturer), so I'm wondering if there is a way to load the drivers through another removable media (FlashDrive perhaps???).
I have a Marvell Yukon 88E8053 PCIe Gigabit Ethernet Controller, and an 915G chipset (the drivers for this chipset are also not present; but I obtained them from Intel separately).
Is there any way for me load these drivers and get my internet connection up and running? I really need to do this since I'm compiling the Gentoo source from scratch, and I need the latest code with the help of Portage.

Thanks a lot in advance.

**sarumont** · 01-13-2005

You should be able to plug the flash drive in and get the drivers off that.

**scientica** · 01-13-2005

Originally Posted by Zer0

I have a Marvell Yukon 88E8053 PCIe Gigabit Ethernet Controller

then you should (I stronly think) use the sk98lin driver ("Marvell Yukon Chipset / SysKonnect SK-98xx Support" (CONFIG_SK98LIN) in the kernel comile, it's under 1000Mbit nic drivers - be sure to compile that if you compile your own kernel).

To load the driver, you should simply have to type:

Code:

modprobe sk98lin

and then follow the rest of the handbooks steps of the network setup.

**Zer0** · 01-14-2005

Well, I'm finally back from the dark recesses of my MBR, and I'm really outta network luck. I tried to load the drivers from my usb drive AND floppy drive. Both gave I/O errors and refused to extract the tar.bz2. So I tried to modprobe the sk98lin driver. After executing the command nothing noticeable occured and I was given the shell prompt again. Expectedly, eth0 is still not configured (at all), and neither is my network connection. According to Gentoo 2004.3, network hardware is non-existent on my computer!

So I'm thinking of giving up a network/portage install and installing straight from the CD. Although before I do that, I need to know something.

I've currently installed Mandrake 10.0 on my only Linux partition. Of course, LILO is my default boot-loader. Is it ok if I don't run fdisk on the linux partition and install the stage 1 tarball right away straight to it? Will I lose LILO in the process (that would really suck), and hence be locked out of all non-live OSes? Will fdisk destroy my LILO bootloader?

Thanks for all the suggestions.

P.S: I'm confused as to which tarball i should unpack, the i686 or the Pentium4. Given the specs below, which one is for me? I don't want to lose out on all the 9 nm Prescott goodness.

Pentium 4 530 3.0GHz (HyperThreading, 800FSB, 1MB L2 cache)

**sarumont** · 01-15-2005

Using fdisk will not bork your mbr unless you do 'fdisk mbr' (or something like that...).

If you are doing a stage3 install, use the pentium4 tarball. This has all the programs built with optimized CFLAGS for a pentium4 processor.

**scientica** · 01-15-2005

Originally Posted by Zer0

So I tried to modprobe the sk98lin driver. After executing the command nothing noticeable occured and I was given the shell prompt again. Expectedly, eth0 is still not configured (at all), and neither is my network connection. According to Gentoo 2004.3, network hardware is non-existent on my computer!

Maybe I wasn't clear enought, after you've run modprobe sk98lin you continue with step 3.c ( http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handboo...oc_chap3_sect1 ), thus run:

Code:

ifconfig eth0
net-setup

(if you sue ADSL you might want to use adsl-setup instead of net-setup - I guess you know wich to choose from reading chapter 3)

if "ifconfig eth0" says nothing, try: "ifconfig -a" and post the output in a post (sorrounded by [ code ] -tags for readabillity)

**Zer0** · 01-15-2005

I had tried modprobe, ifconfig and net-setup before, and nothing seemed to work. Anyway, here is the output from all three scripts (STD_ERR and STD_OUT):

eth0: error fetching interface information: Device not found

SIOCSIFADDR: No such device
eth0: unknown interface: No such device
SIOCSIFBRDADDR: No such device
eth0: unknown interface: No such device
SIOCSIFNETMASK: No such device
SIOCADDRT: No such device
Type "ifconfig" to make sure the interface was configured correctly.

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:552 (552.0 b) TX bytes:552 (552.0 b)

This output is the result of three commands in the following order:

ifconfig eth0
net-setup eth0
ifconfig -a

(As I mentioned earlier, "modprobe sk98lin" showed nothing at all)

I really have given up on the pre-compilation internet-access dream. I'm simply going with the stage1 x86 source on the CD itself.

Thanks for all the help scientica and sarumont.

P.S: Incidentally, eth0 was never configured on my Mandrake boot either, yet I somehow managed to get a connection up-and-running.

**loft306** · 01-21-2005

i wonder if what happens to me is/was happening to you... during install my onboard nic was not eth0 but eth1 and ..... that had me going in circles for a while.......

**Zer0** · 01-21-2005

Well I checked the mandrake network config settings and I find it very wierd that eth0 and eth1 (even eth2) were not recognised as devices, yet my ifconfig showed eth0 correctly setup with my ip-address. Spooky.

Anyway, Mandrake is history, as far as I'm concerned. I simply gave up on quite a few recurring problems with the distro, and i'm really looking forward to compiling Gentoo from scratch. :P

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