New user problems

Forum: User Feedback
Topic: New user problems
started by: DrMikeGreen

Posted by DrMikeGreen on Sep. 25 2005,03:51

I have an EPIA VIA miniITX board which runs Win98SE fine and has run Fedora-4 previously. I can get DSL to boot and initialize now with the framebuffer X driver, but, although the kernal recognizes the LAN "card" as eth0, I cannot access the net. I tried DHCP first, then manually set an IP, mask, gateway, and name server addresses using the netcard setup. It still can't resolve an address. Any suggestions from someone who has used a EPIA miniITX board with DSL? I've used Linux before, but I am not an expert by any means although I'm very familiar with operating systems, hardware, and programming in general.

Posted by green on Sep. 25 2005,21:57

a shot in the dark here, as i do not have a miniITX, but did you try:

sudo pump -i eth0

after the DSL cd finishes booting and type that into a command prompt, but not as root?

did you try to PING any known good IP address after this or boot?

sudo ping yahoo.com

what does it show you when you type:

ifconfig

Posted by DrMikeGreen on Sep. 25 2005,23:33

Initially, ifconfig just shows the local loop (lo) despite eth0 being recognized by the kernel ("eth0 detected, DHCP broadcasting"). If I use the control panel (lancardconfig) to manually set an IP address, etc., then ifconfig shows both "lo" and "eth0". "sudo pump -i eth0" indicates "operation failed" and "sudo ping 192.168.2.1" which should ping the gateway indicates "network unreachable". I suspect there's something screwy about the driver even though this hardware has worked with Linux before.

Posted by brianw on Sep. 25 2005,23:55

Do an lsmod to see which drivers are being loaded (if any). Bellow, mine is using the generic 8390 driver for pcnet_cs. My pcmcia card is a SOHOWARE card. Check the specs for the VIA motherboard to see which chip it uses for network. Once you find out which chip it uses go to the directory
/lib/modules/2.4.26/kernel/drivers/net to see if there is a driver for it. You can manually install the module using modprobe <module name> then run the netcardconfig.

brian@box:~$ lsmod
Module Size Used by Not tainted
pcnet_cs 10852 1
8390 6400 0 [pcnet_cs]
crc32 2816 0 [8390]
pcmcia_core 39840 0 [serial_cs pcnet_cs ds yenta_socket]

Posted by DrMikeGreen on Sep. 26 2005,04:01

lsmod showed a variety of drivers, all seeming to be appropriate. In particular, the "via-rhine" driver was loaded and the "mii" and "crc32" drivers depend on it. The LAN adapter is described sometimes as "VIA Rhine" so that should be right. It just doesn't work.

Posted by doobit on Sep. 26 2005,20:01

the Rhine adapter is a VIA adapter. I'm having the same problem in reverse. I have Win98 that won't resolve a DNS and DSL that works like a charm on the same machine. There are versions of the VIA Rhine adapters. I think Rhine III is the latest. VIA may have Linux drivers available on it's support site. However, DSL should have it working right at boot up as DHCP. How are you running DSL? Did you checksum the iso?

Posted by DrMikeGreen on Sep. 27 2005,13:52

I did not checksum the download, but I've never had problems with a corrupt download on my broadband connection. I'm running DSL from a Compact Flash card that looks like a hard disk to the system, using LOADLIN to boot the kernel. My net card is a Rhine II and does work with Win98 and Fedora Linux. My router supplies an IP address via DHCP, but doesn't seem to provide a name server address for some reason even though I've configured it with one. I've had to manually provide name server addresses on my other computers as well, but, once I do that, everything works fine except with DSL.

Posted by doobit on Sep. 27 2005,16:24

Do you have another machine available to monitor the router's admin screen? If so you can check to see it the router sees the computer. DSL will show up with the computer name "box" unless you change it.

Posted by DrMikeGreen on Sep. 27 2005,17:59

I don't have another computer handy that can do that, but I did boot DSL differently and got it to work. I've been doing "Reboot in MSDOS" mode from Windows and tried instead to set up a shortcut to execute LOADLIN. This creates CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files at the root level of my Windows boot volume, then goes through a hardware restart. Somehow that works where "Reboot in MSDOS" will not. At this point, I may just wait for my bootable USB pen drive to come from the DSL "store" and use that rather than trying to use a floppy boot drive.

Posted by doobit on Sep. 27 2005,20:40

OK, I think I get what's going on with that. One of the first things DSL does when it boots from the CD is look for a DHCP network connection. Since you are booting MSDOS that can't happen. I'm curious as to why you can't format the card FAT32 and use the Frugal install to make the card a bootable volume. I don't want to waste you time if this information is available somewhere else, but I'm asking because I thought that was how the compact flash installs on the VIA eden based machines worked. I want to get one of those for myself to put in the livingroom in front of the TV!

OK, look...check this out I did a little searching around. Why are you doctors all using the little VIA machines? Anyway, here's alink that my help. There was a lot of info on CF bootables when I searched BTW.

< http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....38;st=0 >

Posted by doobit on Sep. 27 2005,20:53

I really think your problem is in the CF install. You should be able to boot directly from that thing and have a network connection.

Here's some better stuff:
< http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....t+flash >

Posted by DrMikeGreen on Sep. 27 2005,21:18

I'm not directly booting into DSL. The CF card is a Win98 system with some room on it. I copied the DSL CD contents to the card as Windows files, then use LOADLIN (a Windows program) to load the DSL kernel. At that point, DSL re-identifies the CF card as a VFAT drive and locates the KNOPPLIX directory and file on it, then mounts it a a virtual drive. The CF card is mounted as /cdrom and DSL goes on its merry way. I think the problem is that Win98 does something to the network card and doesn't go through a hardware reset when you "Restart in MSDOS". Now I'm running LOADLIN after a hardware reset and before Windows initializes and it seems to work. My current problem is that the CF card is marked read-only and I can't keep the automatic ram-disk backup on it.

Posted by doobit on Sep. 28 2005,15:43

Yes, that could be a problem

Here's what I think the solution is going to be for you in the end:

Once you get that CF card unlocked, or get another one, you would do well to format it with two or three partions (if you want to keep Win/DOS on one partition) Install a bootable Windows/DOS on the first primary partion, then do a Frugal/grub install of DSL to the second partition, and choose to install GRUB in the MBR of the first partition, since the CF card is seen as a bootable hard drive. You could also use Lilo, but I just like GRUB because it's not just a Linux bootloader. GRUB or Lilo will let you set up a smooth dual boot for those two OSs on the same CF card. LOADLIN is nice for emergencies, but as you said, it loads DOS first and that can really make things confusing.???