Onboard Realtek 8139 NIC Trouble - with trouble shooting info

[prophet665]

Hello everyone. I have an 6 year old computer with a Realtek 8139 onboard NIC. The system is dual booted between WinXP and Ubuntu 8.04 (beta 5? whatever the last beta was). The NIC works just fine under windows but totally fails under Ubuntu. After reading about 4 million posts I have done the following beginning trouble shooting.

deus@Ex-Machina:/etc/init.d$ sudo lshw -C network
*-network
description: Ethernet interface
product: RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+
vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
physical id: c
bus info: pci@0000:00:0c.0
logical name: eth0
version: 10
serial: 00:60:67:75:9c:71
size: 100MB/s
capacity: 100MB/s
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd autonegotiation
configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=8139too driverversion=0.9.28 duplex=full latency=32 link=yes maxlatency=64 mingnt=32 module=8139too multicast=yes port=MII speed=100MB/s


root@Ex-Machina:/etc/init.d# ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:60:67:75:9c:71
inet6 addr: fe80::260:67ff:fe75:9c71/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 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:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
Interrupt:11 Base address:0xd400

eth0:avahi Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:60:67:75:9c:71
inet addr:169.254.7.51 Bcast:169.254.255.255 Mask:255.255.0.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
Interrupt:11 Base address:0xd400

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:1247 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:1247 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:63608 (62.1 KB) TX bytes:63608 (62.1 KB)


root@Ex-Machina:/etc/init.d# dhclient
There is already a pid file /var/run/dhclient.pid with pid 5663
killed old client process, removed PID file
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.0.6
Copyright 2004-2007 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit ISC DHCP

Listening on LPF/eth0/00:60:67:75:9c:71
Sending on LPF/eth0/00:60:67:75:9c:71
Sending on Socket/fallback
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 7
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 20
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 4
No DHCPOFFERS received.
No working leases in persistent database - sleeping.


root@Ex-Machina:/etc/init.d# dhclient
There is already a pid file /var/run/dhclient.pid with pid 5663
killed old client process, removed PID file
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.0.6
Copyright 2004-2007 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit ISC DHCP

Listening on LPF/eth0/00:60:67:75:9c:71
Sending on LPF/eth0/00:60:67:75:9c:71
Sending on Socket/fallback
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 7
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 20
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 4
No DHCPOFFERS received.
No working leases in persistent database - sleeping.


root@Ex-Machina:/etc/init.d# ls -l | grep net
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 1772 2007-12-03 14:50 networking

I used the chmod command to change the permissions on the networking file just to make sure that wasn't the problem.

root@Ex-Machina:/etc/init.d# networking stop
bash: networking: command not found


It almost seems to me that the NIC drivers aren't loading, but I don't know how to start them.

As a side question:
The USB ports are not working either and I wonder if the problems are related. Of course they are working under WinXP.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

[coopstah13]

are you directly connected to the internet via a cable modem? or are you using a router?

[prophet665]

Using a Linksys router. It is an ethernet connection, not wireless.

It has started hanging on shutdown, and I need to capture the error ad post it also. The error has to do with the NIC. This is frustrating. The NIC worked just fine under 7.04.

[coopstah13]

there have been acpi problems with realtek chipset, try booting with pci=noacpi option and see if that alleviates your problem, if it does and you want to continue using acpi you might need to try the 8139too driver instead of the regular 8139cp driver

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ork/+bug/35683

[prophet665]

there have been acpi problems with realtek chipset, try booting with pci=noacpi option and see if that alleviates your problem, if it does and you want to continue using acpi you might need to try the 8139too driver instead of the regular 8139cp driver

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ork/+bug/35683

Thanks for the help. I would be lost without you guys (and gals) that answer on these boards.

Unfortunately, I do not know where to set the boot options. Which config file do I edit to change the boot options?

In your link they mentioned booting the 8139too driver instead of the 8139cp driver. How do I force this change?

Like most new people, I am extremely familiar with Windows, but I am still learning Linux stuff and there are some definite growing pains.

[coopstah13]

for the boot options take a look at
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/GrubHowto

follow the directions to edit the boot options on that, and at the end of the options line for your kernel add the pci=noacpi thing, then we'll go through using the other driver should this not work

[prophet665]

Ok...added the pci=noapci line to the boot menu and it booted without problems. I still don't have a working NIC, though. The networking application is reporting that it is using the 8139too driver as opposed to the 8139cp driver.

Is this because of the line I added to GRUB? If not, do I need to somehow load the 8139cp drivers?

A second question I have is in relation to the link you provided. It said any changes made to GRUB using the method detailed there will not be persistent.

After making any necessary modifications you can press 'b' to boot that operating system. These modifications will not persist across reboots.

Will modifying the menu.lst file make these changes permanent?

I know for certain this is a NIC problem because I can't even see the router. Pinging 192.168.1.1 gives me a destination hosts unreachable error. Strange that ping on works after I sudo su, I would have thought that command was available to every user.

[coopstah13]

yeah if you added it in the /boot/grub/menu.lst file it would always use that boot option

lets try some other things, post output of these commands

sudo ifconfig eth0
sudo cat /etc/network/interfaces
sudo cat /etc/resolv.conf