bulek's picture

Hi,

I'm trying to install TKL LAMP on my Asrock Nettop S330

www.asrock.com/nettop/spec/S330.asp

and it seems that network card is not recognized as working device. There seems no message in dmesg about this problem and I also cannot identify card cause lspci is not present.  I'll check again with other OS (to eliminate HW problem), but anyway:

- has anyone experienced similar problem ?

- how to deal with it (should I try to add/patch with proper kernel module, is this a known bug,...) ?

- how should TKL in comparison to full Ubuntu distro behave in terms of drivers - are they limited in TKL ?

Thanks in advance,

regards,

Bulek.

Forum: 
Jeremy Davis's picture

AFAIK it uses the standard Ubuntu Server Kernel. If its a known issue with your hardware then there should be a workaround/solution floating around online (assuming that its an Ubuntu issue).

Stas Grishin's picture

I could have sworn I read somewhere that the server build had some issues for TKL and the standard hardy lts build was used. I could be wrong though and I forget where I read it or what I was working on at the time.

Jeremy Davis's picture

Yes Stas you are correct! Glad someone was on the ball!

I just did a search and found the post where Liraz (one of the TKL Devs) states that TKL uses the standard (Desktop) Ubuntu kernel (as opposed to the Server kernel).

@bulek - Do you know what ethernet chip it uses? I tried to find out via google but no joy. If you have a look on the Ubuntu forum (and perhaps even post there) you should be able to find out what commands to use to find out the chip. From there we may be able to help you get it to work.

bulek's picture

Hi,

 I managed somehow to boot with knoppix with basic settings and got lspci info:

01:00:0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller [10ec:8168] (rev 03)

But then I booted into TKL and it started to work... But I'm still a bit pesimistic, cause I remember that it worked in similar fashion on installation and then suddenly wasn't recognized anymore. Reading more info on Internet shows various problems with this controller and r8169 module, so I guess this is not yet a rock solid combination.

Will post more info if I spot more problems, but would also be happy to read your experiences on similar HW and r8169...

Thanks in advance,

regards,

Bulek.

Jeremy Davis's picture

From my reading it seems that it should load the r8168 driver for that chip (not the r8169 as it does). I could be wrong but it seems that perhaps the r8168 driver is a more robust and reliable driver with Realtek PCI-express NICs!? From what I've read the r8169 driver should work, but reality seems to be it only works intermittedly at best (for most users anyway - some reported it working fine).

I note that 8.04.4 has just been released which may or may not fix it, but I guess thats not really any use to you without network connectivity (a little hard to apt-get upgrade without access to any repos!). Although downloading the 8.04.4 "alternative CD" and adding it to your repos may allow you to upgrade TKL (latest version based on 8.04.3) to 8.04.4 (which shouldn't break anything).

There seems to be plenty of other people having the same problem and a number of people (but not all) reporting success after a bit of fiddling.

Here are some links:

Ubuntu LaunchPad:

Ubuntu forums:

And another link, this time from a French site (link is Google English translation):
(This link was referenced in one of the above - sorry I forgot which one).
Last but definately not least is a link to the latest r8168 Realtek driver (on the Realtek website):
I cannot vouch for this driver (as I don't have this chipset so I can't test it). Actually I can't even confirm that its the right driver (the links to the Realtek drivers from the above links all seem to be too old so I found this one myself) but I think it'd be worth a shot!

Good luck with it. Hopefully some of the above will be helpful and not too confusing. My advice would be to pick one (after having a read of them all) and try it.

Hope you can get it to work!

[edit] Just noticed that Knoppix may be using the r8168 driver: "01:00:0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller [10ec:8168] (rev 03)".

Or perhaps the 8168 is entirely coincidental, or its just recognising that the r8168 is the best driver for the hardware. We probably need someone who isn't as much of a linux noob as me to know for sure.

Question is, does the NIC work under Knoppix?

 

bulek's picture

Hi,

 

thanks for exhaustive info. I guess the best way would be to try Realtek driver from here :

www.realtek.com.tw/DOWNLOADS/downloadsView.aspx

Any chance that someone builds this kernel module on development machine with kernel sources so I can test it ?

 

Thanks in advance,

 

regards,

Bulek.

 

 
Jeremy Davis's picture

Except using www.realtec.com.tw instead of the IP (which that address resolves to).

I won't have a chance to do this anytime soon as I am flat out with other stuff, but if I get a chance to have a go I'll let you know.

To be honest though I've not got a lot of experience with this sort of thing so it'd be a case of the blind leading the blind!

I really hope you get it sorted. I guess worst case scenario is wait and try the next TKL release (which will be based on Ubuntu 10.04 rather than 8.04) as hopefully the newer kernel will work ok.

bulek's picture

Hi,

 

thanks for response. I understand... I wonder how hard is to compile kernel module under TKL ?

I remember that this is not so hard under Ubunty (you just install kernel sources and few commands), so I wonder if same is possible under TKL ?

 

I also remember some discussion that TKL is using other kernel than standard Ubuntu ?

I'd kindly ask if you can only help me with those questions, I'll do the rest...

 

Regards,

 

Bulek.

 

 

 
Jeremy Davis's picture

as that's basically what it is under the hood (except for the kernel). As for kernel, TKL uses the standard Desktop kernel (rather than Server one).

Hope that helps and good luck. Look forward to hearing how it all goes for you.

bulek's picture

Hi,

network card now works under TKL. I'm not sure if this is stable enough solution, but anyway, it works now....

Basically I did:

apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r`
 

then used latest Realtek driver from above link "r8168-8.016.00.tar.bz2"

and customized install script a bit.

and also at last I had to do :

mkinitramfs -o /boot/initrd.img-`uname -r`

It seems crucial that you rename r8169 to something else, it seems that those two are overlapping, so user has to choose between them. In my case, r8168 now does the job correctly...

 

HTH,

regards,

Bulek.

 

 
 
Jeremy Davis's picture

Glad to hear you got it sorted and thanks for sharing your fix as I'm sure others may find it handy.

Hopefully it will be stable and problem free from here on in!

bulek's picture

Hi,

 

just found the hard way that my solution is not stable at all. I did few reboots and it worked, then installed PC on remote location (300kom) and then found out, that network card sometimes (specially on reboot, not power hard boot) appears as verything is ok, but doesn't send any packets beyond own IP and sometimes it even dissappears from lspci...

 

Whoooh, will try with new version of driver now....

 

BTW, I'm also interested in that proposed potential solution :

" .. Although downloading the 8.04.4 "alternative CD" and adding it to your repos may allow you to upgrade TKL (latest version based on 8.04.3) to 8.04.4 (which shouldn't break anything)..."

Can I find any more info somewhere how to do this ? I have other PCs in my home, so could do it even without network....

 

Thanks in advance,

regards,

Bulek.

 

 
Jeremy Davis's picture

I just had a quick google and couldn't find exactly what I was after but found a few things that may (or may not) be of interest:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AptGet/Offline/Repository

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=122534 and http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=216167 look like they contain some interesting ideas. They are quite old but should still be relevant.

Some other ideas that require a net connected Ubuntu PC http://aptoncd.sourceforge.net/ and https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Apt-Cacher-Server

 

bulek's picture

Hi,

 

I've compiled new REaltek driver that was released just recently and first impression seems to be major step forward. Network card seems to be running fine now, but I can't reboot or poweroff properly anymore (same problem on two identical PCs), but this is smaller problem than problems before. Since driver is new, I guess some other users will also spot this behaviour - but at the moment no useful advices on Internet.

I'll post notes how to compile Realtek kernel module as this could be handy to anyone else wanting to compile kernel modules on TKL.

Regards,

Bulek.

 
bulek's picture

Hi,

 

I've compiled new REaltek driver that was released just recently and first impression seems to be major step forward. Network card seems to be running fine now, but I can't reboot or poweroff properly anymore (same problem on two identical PCs), but this is smaller problem than problems before. Since driver is new, I guess some other users will also spot this behaviour - but at the moment no useful advices on Internet.

I'll post notes how to compile Realtek kernel module as this could be handy to anyone else wanting to compile kernel modules on TKL.

Regards,

Bulek.

 
Jeremy Davis's picture

That sounds like a positive progression at least. I think it'd be great if you posted some info about that here as I'm sure it will be usefull for others.

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