Problem with Davicom NIC - Slackware

[lantern]

Hi,

I've got Slackware 10.0 with kernel 2.6 running on a Dell Dimension 4400 and I can't get the network card (Davicom DM9102AF) to work, even when I boot with Knoppix. Whether Knop or Slack, the correct module (dmfe) gets loaded at boot, and both dmesg and lspci show that the card is correctly recognized, yet when I run ifconfig all I can see is the "lo" interface, not 'eth0'.

Then when I bring it up manually with 'ifconfig eth0 up' I get the following output:

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:08:A1:09:24:EE  
          inet6 addr: fe80::208:a1ff:fe09:24ee/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:2 errors:6 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:34 errors:2 dropped:0 overruns:1 carrier:2
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:303 (303.0 b)  TX bytes:6708 (6.5 Kb)
          Interrupt:9 Base address:0xbc00 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b

But when I try to run 'dhclient' I get an error message, "No broadcast interfaces found - exiting."

Again, this happens whether I boot into Knoppix or Slack.

Here's the output from 'lspci' in Slackware:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 82845 845 (Brookdale) Chipset Host Bridge (rev 04)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82845 845 (Brookdale) Chipset AGP Bridge (rev 04)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82801BA/CA/DB/EB/ER Hub interface to PCI Bridge (rev 05)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82801BA ISA Bridge (LPC) (rev 05)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82801BA IDE U100 (rev 05)
00:1f.2 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801BA/BAM USB (Hub #1) (rev 05)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corp. 82801BA/BAM SMBus (rev 05)
00:1f.4 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801BA/BAM USB (Hub #2) (rev 05)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV11 [GeForce2 MX/MX 400] (rev b2)
02:09.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs SB Live! EMU10k1 (rev 07)
02:09.1 Input device controller: Creative Labs SB Live! MIDI/Game Port (rev 07)
02:0b.0 Ethernet controller: Davicom Semiconductor, Inc. Ethernet 100/10 MBit (rev 31)

And here are the lines from dmesg (Slack) relating to the device and driver:

dmfe: Davicom DM9xxx net driver, version 1.36.4 (2002-01-17)
divert: allocating divert_blk for eth0
eth0: Davicom DM9102 at pci0000:02:0b.0, 00:08:a1:09:24:ee, irq 9.

And here's the output from lsmod (Slack):

Module                  Size  Used by
nls_utf8                1792  1 
nls_cp437               5632  1 
vfat                   10880  1 
fat                    38336  1 vfat
psmouse                17544  0 
ipv6                  212064  8 
ohci_hcd               18436  0 
ehci_hcd               27012  0 
intel_agp              16540  1 
hw_random               4500  0 
shpchp                 92140  0 
pciehp                 89836  0 
i8xx_tco                5524  0 
uhci_hcd               27920  0 
emu10k1_gp              2688  0 
gameport                3712  1 emu10k1_gp
evdev                   7168  0 
ds                     13572  0 
yenta_socket           17536  0 
pcmcia_core            52676  2 ds,yenta_socket
ext3                  106088  3 
jbd                    47256  1 ext3
ide_scsi               13316  0 
dmfe                   18076  0 
crc32                   4096  1 dmfe
agpgart                26920  1 intel_agp

And here's my rc.inet1.conf

# Config information for eth0:
IPADDR[0]=""
NETMASK[0]=""
USE_DHCP[0]="yes"
DHCP_HOSTNAME[0]=""

# Config information for eth1:
IPADDR[1]=""
NETMASK[1]=""
USE_DHCP[1]=""
DHCP_HOSTNAME[1]=""

# Config information for eth2:
IPADDR[2]=""
NETMASK[2]=""
USE_DHCP[2]=""
DHCP_HOSTNAME[2]=""

# Config information for eth3:
IPADDR[3]=""
NETMASK[3]=""
USE_DHCP[3]=""
DHCP_HOSTNAME[3]=""

# Default gateway IP address:
GATEWAY=""

# Change this to "yes" for debugging output to stdout.  Unfortunately,
# /sbin/hotplug seems to disable stdout so you'll only see debugging output
# when rc.inet1 is called directly.
DEBUG_ETH_UP="no"

Any ideas how I can get this to work?

Thanks,
lantern

[puntmuts]

Looks like you have troubles getting an ipv4 address. The module loads, but without ip address your interface will go down after failing to get one. To be sure everything works without dhcp, you could try and assign a fixed ip address and specify a gateway in your rc.inet1.conf. Specify the nameserver in the /etc/resolv.conf file.

Slackware uses dhcpcd by default as dhcp client. If you want to use dhclient you'll probably have to config that (dhclient.conf IIRC) or specify options on the command line.

Try to run dhcpcd on the command line could help also (you'll need to specify options here as well). Setting a higher value for timeout could help sometimes as well.

Sorry I can't offer you a simple way to solve this, but as far as I can see your configuration is okay, module is loaded, config file looks good, etc. Did you install dhcpcd ?

[lantern]

I tried running "dhcpcd eth0 -t 60" but no success. It completes with an exit value 14, no ip address, and the following in syslog:

May  3 16:24:36 nf-web kernel: eth0: Tx timeout - resetting
May  3 16:25:40 nf-web dhcpcd[2841]: timed out waiting for a valid DHCP server response

But I know there's a valid dhcp server ... I have other machines obtaining ip's with no problem.

What do you think?
lantern

[T40Slack]

Do you have access to the DHCP server to check it's logs? Do you know that the requests are getting to the server at all?

[puntmuts]

You could try to specify a static ip address in the same range as the dhcp server/ router. See if you can ping an ip address then.