No auto-connection in 3.4

[necokop]

In the 3.3 version, when I boot from CD, my internet connection was automattically configured and it was ready to use. This was the best feature for me. I have downloaded 3.4 and run same as before, but there were no internet connected, I have looked for someways but it was useless.. I am the client computer in a home-lan with a cable connection. Is there something I missed? Any new command I have to use? What can be done about this? Do I have to use 3.3 instead of 3.4 because of this problem? Thanx in advance..
N.
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After writing the post, I have tested 3.3 again with my usual profile.I have seen that internet doesnt work there either. So, this became a general problem to me.. What can be the reason for my internet to be seen beforehand with the same profile but not anymore? Is this an unstability?
N.

[Harry Kuhman]

What can be the reason for my internet to be seen beforehand with the same profile but not anymore? Is this an unstability?
N.
Install any Windows updates lately? I had a problem (discussed in this forum in a couple of threads I stared) where Knoppix connected fine, then the same CD's stopped connecting to the Internet right after I installed some windows "security updates".

[necokop]

Yes, Windows updated itself last week. Can this be the problem? Can an update effect the computer while it is not workin? That seems to be weird..

[Harry Kuhman]

Well, what happened in you case is still just speculation, but yes, something can change the ability to access the NIC on a computer. It happened to me and to many other users. Here are two threads that discuss some of it and give some potential work arounds. There are a lot of other threads on this forum where it's been discussed too, but I haven't kept track of them all.

http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2117&highlight=

http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2164&highlight=

Try some of the stuff there and post back to let us know if you seem to be seeing the same thing.

Also, if it's not mentioned in the two threads above, try the "knoppix noapic" cheat code, which catfish found worked for him when the same thing happened to him. (and it works to fix my problem too).

[necokop]

Ok here`s the thing; I have (tried to) read the topics about this stuff.. I tried 4 possible solutions but none seems to be workin for me.. Here are the steps I tried booting:
1) knoppix noapic myconf=scan (did not work)
2) knoppix noscsi myconf=scan (did not work)
3) expert (with this option, after the first 'n' it asked me if I wanna get from floppy or sth like that and halted, no reaction.. restarted)
4) failsafe, sudo mii-tool -r, netcardconfig, auto dhcp.. (did not work)

My laptop is Compaq Presario, none seems to work here.. Maybe I made sth wrong, not sure.. any further comment?
Thanx

[Harry Kuhman]

Well, as said already, it's only speculation so far that we are seeing the same problem, but it certainly sounds like it. Particularly when I now know you're using a Compaq notebook and I had it on an HP notebook and we both got it after doing the "update".



4) failsafe, sudo mii-tool -r, netcardconfig, auto dhcp.. (did not work)

I don't know what you mean by failsafe. When I did this I just booted Knoppix (versions 3.1, 3.2 or 3.3) with no cheat codes at all. When it came up I clicked on one of the web page links in the browser and saw that the network was not responding. I then did the sudo mii-tool -r to reset things and the netcardconfig and was able to get a nice clean dhcp configuration (after which the Internet was available to me).

By the way, versions of 3.4 would hang on booting on my notebook (but would boot fine on my desktop). I would get to the cheat code prompt, but see nothing after that. The screen stayed blank. I finally found that I could start the notebook with 3.4 with the cheat code "linux26 acpi-off noscsi". This would boot fine and I had the network available when I booted, no need for the mii-tool reset. If you don't have 3.4 yet then I don't think the linus26 code will be of any use, but you might want to try the other two.

I'm not using the myconfig=scan code at all. It seems unlikely that it's causing any problem but it is a difference between what you are doing and what I'm doing. Maybe it's a source of the problem when you try the expert trick. My suggestion would be to try things without it, then try adding it back after you get the network issue resolved.

If none of this is helpful, then I think you need to try to figure out at what point the NIC is failing. Does Knoppix see the NIC at eth0 at all? Are you seeng any sorts of errors or failures as netcardconfig trys to configure the card? Take notes as you run your tests, look for information on how the connection is failing, and I expect you'll be able to resolve it. These are the same things I went through when my card stopped working, and I had to get a lot of information on what was now going wrong before I could come up with a way to make it right.


Good luck, keep trying, and remember: Damn you Bill Gates!

[necokop]

I have tried this failsafe option just in case I am missing something. After your post I tried it for normal boot and the rest also. But it did not work. (by the way I tried the commands in the previous post with 3.4). After all these, I again tried all with 3.3 but no reaction. The thing here is, when I execute netcardconfig and say 'yes' to DHCP, system looks for eth0 and says that it has failed.. I even tried expert mode by 3.3 but not worked for me.
So, I am thinking what can be done for this shitty situation, because Knoppix or Linux without internet means nothing and useless for me.. But I wanna use it for sure, can not stuck into 'Just Windows!'..
Moreover, as far as I got from the readings with ur previous topics, there are people who has this kinda problem for 1+ year. Then, is this all hardware dependent (certain updates effect certain hardware)? Cant we talk about a specific "security update" as a reason, or is this a total ambiguity? This happened to me with the last weeks update, but some got this with previous updates? Then there happens to be a hard to understand problem and also hard to solve..
Anyway, these did not worked for me, what can be a suggestion? Is formatting computer a solution? Or is this problem permanent? Is there a way to reset the configuration of the hardware to factory settings? I am really confused and pissed off.. As u say, Damn!!

[Harry Kuhman]

Moreover, as far as I got from the readings with ur previous topics, there are people who has this kinda problem for 1+ year. Then, is this all hardware dependent (certain updates effect certain hardware)? Cant we talk about a specific "security update" as a reason, or is this a total ambiguity? This happened to me with the last weeks update, but some got this with previous updates? Then there happens to be a hard to understand problem and also hard to solve..

I can certainly understand your frustation and confusion here. I do not have sollid proof that it is the windows "update" that causes this, but it happened right after an update for me, and for you, and for several other people here. It's not to hard to imagine that a company with a paranoid hatred of Linux, and one with a track record of doing illegal things against all companies that they see as competition, would add code if they could to hurt Linux. But since Linux is a different OS, what could that code do? Well, all modern NICs have an EEprom on them (the manufacturer uses them to store a unique MAC address for each NIC) Since the eeprom is there anyway, many chip makers also use it to store configuration information. IF that configuration information were set to something bogus then any OS that trusted it would fail to connect with the NIC (and why wouldn't an OS trust it's hardware's configuration?) Of course, an OS by a company that deliberately did this would simply not trust the NIC default configuration, initalize it as it sees fit and work fine. Why would my system have failed a year ago and yours just now? Well, it could be as simple as new NICs and ethernet chips are being added to the code with different updates, so more and more NICs fall to the dark side as the set of affected systems grows. Unfortunately, I have no specific update, it happened the very first time I let XP accept all updates, about a month after I had the notebook (I'm behind a firewall and wasn't in a rush for them) and Knoppix had worked fine for that first month.



Anyway, these did not worked for me, what can be a suggestion? Is formatting computer a solution?

You're joking, right? Just in case you are not, or for the benefit of anyone who might read that and not know you were, Formatting is never the solution, telling you to Format your hard drive is simply the way a tech smuck tells you to go away and stop bothering him, that he has no clue what you problem is and can't be bothered to try to fin out. It's something he can say in a couple of seconds and will make you go away for many hours. And it's likely that, since you will have to reinstall all of your software again from scratch, whatever strange combination of things caused the problem will not happen again. And even if it does, when you call back you will likely not get him. Tech support always raises their middle finger into the air when they tell you to reformat your disk.

In this case, it's even more of a joke. You're running from CD, not hard disk (RIGHT???). And other than this problem, that many others have seen, Knoppix is working fine. I'm 100% certain reformatting the hard drive will not make anything better.

Just to be sure, you are running from CD, are you not? If you are installing Knoppix to a hard drive then you could well have a completely different problem. People post in this forum every few weeks that they installed to hard drive and their Internet connection stopped working. If this is what is happening to you read through for some of those posts. Why the install scripts are never changed to correct this common problem I don't understand.



Or is this problem permanent? Is there a way to reset the configuration of the hardware to factory settings? I am really confused and pissed off.. As u say, Damn!!

I just tried to check out the http://www.scyld.com/diag site for the tools I used a year ago and find that the site has been completely changed and the tools that I found there are gone now. I was going to suggest that you download the tools, compile them and investigate the problem further. Also, there is an emergency option in one of the tools that claims to reflash the eeprom to a default configuration. I wasn't brave enough to use it on my notebook since I had a work around, but in your case it might have been an option.

The owner of this company is quite a heavyweight on NICs and has done a lot of Linux work. Maybe the tools (including mii-diag, which is what led me to the site) have been moved elsewhere. Maybe you can contact the author, Donald Becker, and he can provide them (he may even know a lot more about the problem, if anyone does I would expect it's him). Obviously you can't expect him to spend any time providing tech support for a Compaq system though. I do have the C code for mii-diag that I downloaded a year ago and could e-mail it to you if that would help. But he also had a number of different utilities for different chip sets, and if I remember correctly those utilities were where the magic reset the eeprom code was. (You have to read through the source to find it, iit's not in the default command list.) Unfortunately, I did not grab all of the programs for the different chips when they were there.

I just found a note on the site that reads "We are in the process of reorganizing the Linux Driver pages. Please check back soon if a page you are looking for is temporarily unavailable.". Maybe the drivers and diagnostics will be back soon and you can use them to reset your NIC, but I have no idea how long ago that was posted.

There is also the chance that (at least if your problem is reallly the same problem I have, which we clearly don't really know) enough people might have this problem and at some point someone working on Linux will decide to simply do the same thing that Microsoft seems to be doing; not trust the eeprom and set up the chip into some know good default setting. I think some versions of Linux may ever do that already, or effectively do the same thing by issuing an extra reset to the card at boot (doing what the "sudo mii-tool -r" does for me)

If you haven't given up yet, let me suggest you try some of the same things I did when I was investigating the problem. Use ethereal to watch the packet flow during dhcp setup and see where it is failing. Then get a hub (not a switch) and watch the speed negoitation and dhcp traffic again with ethereal from a different system. This will help you understand if your NIC is failing to send packets, failing to receive them, or both (or neither). And if you send me an e-mail address that I can use to send an attachment to, I'll send you the mii-diag tool to see if that helps you at all. You can e-mail this to me by the link on this message; but I can't use the forum built-in e-mail to include an attachment.

By the way, look at your network in the control panel under XP to see just what chip set your Compaq is using, it will help you get the right tool when the scyld site is back (or it might even be the one I downloaded for my own use).


And one more though. You mentioned that the notebook was a Compaq Presario, but didn't give and model or configuration information. I've been assuming (because you certainly would have mentioned it if this were not the case) that your notebook has one wired NIC in it and no wireless capability. Please confirm this. If you do have wireless capability in the notebook as well as a wired NIC then eth0 might well have ended up being the wireless NIC (I'll save the theory on why it worked before for a later day).

[turbines]

See this thread.
http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10784

[Harry Kuhman]

See this thread.
http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10784
That thread is about the all too common network problems that happen after Knoppix is installed to a hard drive. Such problem are posted here every week or two. As far as I know, necokop is not installing to a hard drive, his problems are when booting Knoppix right from CD. Completely different issue.