"tg3" NIC driver possibly "suspect".

Forum: Networking
Topic: "tg3" NIC driver possibly "suspect".
started by: d4cnobby

Posted by d4cnobby on Aug. 05 2004,14:05

Hi,
I have tried three versions of DSL on a couple
or HP-Compaq d530 PC's (basic 2 Gig Celeron corporate
workhorse) without success in the NIC detection
department.

The card in question is a 10/100/1000 Mbit/sec embedded
(I believe) ethernet device made by BroadCom and designated
as a BCM5782 (57xx series).

A Google search widely indicated that the "tg3" driver would
be an appropriate driver. This was confirmed by my usage of
the 0.2.14 "System Rescue CD" [http://www.sysresccd.org/]
on one of these boxes.

That is to say, the "tg3" driver on that utility distro
loaded without a hitch, but the same driver on DSL versions
0.5.2 , 0.7.1 and 0.7.3 baulked and didn't load at all :-(

An attempt at "forcing' the issue with "insmod -f tg3" ,
resulted in complaints about "no suitable device" being
found or suchlike ...

- should the driver source be checked and then the driver be recompiled ?
- any ideas ?

Peter (not quite so happy about this one)

Posted by cbagger01 on Aug. 08 2004,01:45

According to a few people out on the Internet, the knoppix autodetect routines (that are also used in DSL) will try to load the wrong driver by mistake.

See these links for details:

< http://jriddell.org/thinkpad-r40e.html >

< http://lists.planet-lab.org/piperma....20.html >

I doubt that DSL / KNOPPIX has built-in support for the correct driver, since this is fairly recent comments. You will most likely need to acquire the driver source code, kernel sources and install the gcc development packagages in order to rebuild your kernel so that it will work with this network card.

Another choice is to go with the Gentoo LiveCD instead of DSL or KNOPPIX.

Finally, a workaround is to buy a more standard NIC card from a computer store and install it and then disable your built-in NIC. Try looking at http://www.salescircular.com for some good deals. You can usually find a supported NIC that is selling for as little as $10.00US or sometimes even free after rebates.

Good Luck.