Ethernet not working! (forcedeth)

[saz]

Hi!

I use archlinux and gentoo linux. I used to use wireless, but now I have the possibility to use cable.

But for some reason I can't get it to work, not in arch, gentoo, knoppix (livecd) or ubuntu (livecd).

It always times out when trying to get an IP... And on dmesg I always get the same "forcedeth: eth0: no link during initialization" error..

ethtool

[sa@Feio ~]$ sudo ethtool eth0
Settings for eth0:
    Supported ports: [ MII ]
    Supported link modes:   10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full 
                            100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full 
                            1000baseT/Full 
    Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
    Advertised link modes:  10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full 
                            100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full 
                            1000baseT/Full 
    Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
    Speed: Unknown! (65535)
    Duplex: Unknown! (255)
    Port: MII
    PHYAD: 19
    Transceiver: external
    Auto-negotiation: on
    Supports Wake-on: g
    Wake-on: d
    Link detected: no

route

Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
192.168.0.1   *               255.255.255.0   U     0      0        0 eth0
default         192.168.0.1   0.0.0.0         UG    0      0        0 eth0

dmesg

forcedeth 0000:00:11.0: irq 758 for MSI/MSI-X
eth0: no link during initialization.

ifconfig

[sa@Feio ~]$ ifconfig -a
eth0   Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:1A:92:83:1D:8D  
          BROADCAST 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:22 Base address:0x4000

hope you can help!

[technocase]

Hi!

I use archlinux and gentoo linux. I used to use wireless, but now I have the possibility to use cable.

But for some reason I can't get it to work, not in arch, gentoo, knoppix (livecd) or ubuntu (livecd).

It always times out when trying to get an IP... And on dmesg I always get the same "forcedeth: eth0: no link during initialization" error..

ethtool

[sa@Feio ~]$ sudo ethtool eth0
Settings for eth0:
    Supported ports: [ MII ]
    Supported link modes:   10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full 
                            100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full 
                            1000baseT/Full 
    Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
    Advertised link modes:  10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full 
                            100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full 
                            1000baseT/Full 
    Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
    Speed: Unknown! (65535)
    Duplex: Unknown! (255)
    Port: MII
    PHYAD: 19
    Transceiver: external
    Auto-negotiation: on
    Supports Wake-on: g
    Wake-on: d
    Link detected: no

route

Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
192.168.0.1   *               255.255.255.0   U     0      0        0 eth0
default         192.168.0.1   0.0.0.0         UG    0      0        0 eth0

dmesg

forcedeth 0000:00:11.0: irq 758 for MSI/MSI-X
eth0: no link during initialization.

ifconfig

[sa@Feio ~]$ ifconfig -a
eth0   Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:1A:92:83:1D:8D  
          BROADCAST 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:22 Base address:0x4000

hope you can help!

=======================

Hi,

As a newbie this problem looks similar to mine today. Is it solved?

[saz]

no it is not

[DaWoo]

Well, I'm not that new here but I had a similar problem. The eth0 would not work. I disabled and re-enabled the device and everything worked.
If this helps, great!! (I'm cool!!!) If not, I tried

[saz]

xD

tried that a zillion times, i guess its a bit more complicated...

[DaWoo]

Typically, people will ask you to post your output for "lspci". We'll (They'll) need to know your hardware config.

[saz]

i'll do that just a bit later, i'm a little busy right now...

[technocase]

no it is not

Hi Saz,

A friend handed me the Linux Bible 2007 edition and I decided to give it a try.
For a start I removed all drives and devices except DVD-drive and booted the included DVD with Knoppix 5.0 live.

Succes first time!! both onboard Gigaports came on and Internet was there! including a clean Desktop GUI.

I spended quite a few hours to get the hardware up and running several times with differend bootdevices and DVD/CD 's, but now systemstart is more or less reproducable, although different distributions including Windows XP pro, mess things up.

I now know and proved myself that hardware is functional (transmission on both ports!). Post message says otherwise.
The OpenSuse 11.0 distribution shuts down both links during boot and detects the NVidia MCP555 chip bus but de OS OpenSuse11.0 is not capable of networking. Idem with XP, But Xandros 3.11 restated one link and found the Internet.

Switching off after the system hangs does you no good: I guess the Biosram gets corrupted and the board is sometimes left in a unknown state. Knoppix always fixed my problem(s) if allowed to shut down its own way.

I am a hardwareguy forced to use and sometimes understand different softwaretools. Observation of the bootscreen messages does me believe that the forcedeth driver shuts off physical links (link lights on the router goes off) but does not bring it back properly.

If you have some software knowledge and know where to look (dmesg, lspci) I will try to pindown the deeper cause of it.
let me know.

technocase

system used: (brandnew) ASUS M2N-SLI mobo with AMD Athlon (tm) 64X2 Dual Core 5200+
2x2G Kingston KVR667 main memory
XFX GeFORCE 8400GS /256Mb PCI-E with LiteOn E1770NSL CRT. (DVD/CD: NEC DVD_RW ND-4550A)
different S/PATA and SCSI-drives available for testing

Knoppix: http://www.knoppix.com/

[saz]

first of all thank you very much for your willingness to help! It's not easy to find someone with that! so thank you!

You can see already my dmesg output on my first post.

here is my lspci output:

lspci

sa@Feio ~]$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: nVidia Corporation C55 Host Bridge (rev a2)
00:00.1 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C55 Memory Controller (rev a1)
00:00.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C55 Memory Controller (rev a1)
00:00.3 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C55 Memory Controller (rev a1)
00:00.4 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C55 Memory Controller (rev a1)
00:00.5 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C55 Memory Controller (rev a2)
00:00.6 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C55 Memory Controller (rev a1)
00:00.7 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C55 Memory Controller (rev a1)
00:01.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C55 Memory Controller (rev a1)
00:01.1 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C55 Memory Controller (rev a1)
00:01.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C55 Memory Controller (rev a1)
00:01.3 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C55 Memory Controller (rev a1)
00:01.4 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C55 Memory Controller (rev a1)
00:01.5 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C55 Memory Controller (rev a1)
00:01.6 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C55 Memory Controller (rev a1)
00:02.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C55 Memory Controller (rev a1)
00:02.1 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C55 Memory Controller (rev a1)
00:02.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C55 Memory Controller (rev a1)
00:03.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation C55 PCI Express bridge (rev a1)
00:06.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation C55 PCI Express bridge (rev a1)
00:07.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation C55 PCI Express bridge (rev a1)
00:09.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation MCP55 Memory Controller (rev a1)
00:0a.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP55 LPC Bridge (rev a2)
00:0a.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation MCP55 SMBus (rev a2)
00:0a.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation MCP55 Memory Controller (rev a2)
00:0b.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP55 USB Controller (rev a1)
00:0b.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP55 USB Controller (rev a2)
00:0d.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP55 IDE (rev a1)
00:0e.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP55 SATA Controller (rev a2)
00:0e.1 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP55 SATA Controller (rev a2)
00:0e.2 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP55 SATA Controller (rev a2)
00:0f.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP55 PCI bridge (rev a2)
00:11.0 Bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP55 Ethernet (rev a2)
00:12.0 Bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP55 Ethernet (rev a2)
00:13.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP55 PCI Express bridge (rev a2)
00:14.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP55 PCI Express bridge (rev a2)
00:15.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP55 PCI Express bridge (rev a2)
00:16.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP55 PCI Express bridge (rev a2)
00:17.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP55 PCI Express bridge (rev a2)
00:18.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP55 PCI Express bridge (rev a2)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G80 [GeForce 8800 GTS] (rev a2)
04:07.0 Multimedia audio controller: C-Media Electronics Inc CM8738 (rev 10)
04:0b.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6306 Fire II IEEE 1394 OHCI Link Layer Controller (rev c0)

Observation of the bootscreen messages does me believe that the forcedeth driver shuts off physical links (link lights on the router goes off) but does not bring it back properly.

I think the exact same thing.

[technocase]

Hi Saz,

I booted my system systematic with different hardware combinations:

I noticed that after a power-up link lights on the router came on. sometimes only one, sometimes both ports. so I decided to find a reproducable setup.

earlier I asked ASUS for help, but the answer was not satisfying.

I wrote:

Dear Madam. Sir,

In reply I double checked all attached equipment: with only 1 pci-e card (XFX GeFORCE 8400 GS) and 1 DVD drive (NEC
I tried to reproduce misbehaviour of LAN ports at boot.

Procedure:

• Power cord off, switch off, LAN cable Red in LANport1, LAN cable Blue in LANport2, 3COM gigaswitch operational
• Power cord on, switch off
• Power cord on, switch on -> motherboard-LED comes up and so do all status lights (ASUS 2xorange 3COM 2xgreen)

Observation 1: activityLEDs on port1&2 on (orange), link speed LED port1 on, port2 fast blinking (green)

• ATX power button pushed: POST stopped with “Warning: LAN Cable fail “

• DEL ->Advanced -> AI NET2 check: POST LAN1/LAN2 both enabled -> changed to disabled.

Observation 2: statuses and length garbled, but waiting for 5 sec turned all statuses to normal and length to N/A (<2m)

• From there: ESC -> EXIT and save; reboot and power switched off immediately after the beep.
Wait for a few sec -> power switch on: both statuses on 3COM and ASUS ok (see Observ 1)
• ATX power button pushed -> link lights on 3COM stayed on, KNOPPIX 5.0 DVD started Linux…
• -> After about 3min a full desktop available.

Observation 3: UDEV takes both link lights off, and LAN2 came on again and stayed

• Within Knoppix->Network/Internet->Network card configuration: selected eth0 card in the Xdialog box
• -> Ok -> send DHCP broadcast? -> ok, and from the netcardconfig box the message said: “device eth0 not configured yet”
• Again Knoppix->Network/Internet->Network card configuration: selected eth1 card in the Xdialog box
• -> Ok -> send DHCP broadcast? -> ok, and from the netcardconfig box the message said: “ok, lo,eth1”

Functional test with google ok. Internet is there, so no direct persistent hardware fault

!! let’s take working LAN cable blue (2) out. And start over. Guess: link established and Internet was there.
LANport1 functional.

So after UDEV hotplug detection of LAN1 (link on,off and on) I put the blue cable in, immediately had link light on,
Let KNOPPIX finish booting and after the desktops was available I was able to use both LAN ports I checked with different small tools the packets send and pinged the reported IP addresses (got from ifconfig) from a remote site -> ok

My problem is now half solved: only KNOPPIX is ok. But if I shutdown and reboot a different OS (even XP) lights are taken off and we are out of the game. Only strictly following the above procedure (1 LAN cable in and later added) let me boot KNOPPIX again and succeed.

Question now: do you have a simple reliable tool to control the N570 MCP55 chipset and the external Marvell PHY?
An effective tool like mii-tool and ethtool are not allowed to read status and romdata (even as root).
After ifdown eth0 ifconfig showed only eth1, but status lights stayed on and operational!

As I like to understand and trust my hardware will/can you help?

Thanks in advance,


A loyal ASUS fan




Perhaps you have to go through the same sort procedure and I will assist if needed.
let's wait a few days and maybe ASUS comes up with someting usable.

technocase