Strange problem with PCI Ethernet NIC

[rolfhub]

Hi
I've got a strange problem with a PCI Ethernet Card (10/100 MBit), it just works fine if I boot Knoppix using a 2.4 Kernel (no matter which version), but if I try a 2.6 kernel (which is the only one available on the newest Knoppix CD), the system hangs while booting (no kernel panic, it just locks up, not responding to any keypress any more).

Here is the output of lspci, using Knoppix 3.7 with Kernel 2.4:


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce2 AGP (different version?) (rev c1)
0000:00:00.1 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Memory Controller 0 (rev c1)
0000:00:00.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Memory Controller 4 (rev c1)
0000:00:00.3 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Memory Controller 3 (rev c1)
0000:00:00.4 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Memory Controller 2 (rev c1)
0000:00:00.5 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Memory Controller 5 (rev c1)
0000:00:01.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce2 ISA Bridge (rev a4)
0000:00:01.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation nForce2 SMBus (MCP) (rev a2)
0000:00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 USB Controller (rev a4)
0000:00:02.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 USB Controller (rev a4)
0000:00:02.2 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 USB Controller (rev a4)
0000:00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 AC97 Audio Controler (MCP) (rev a1)
0000:00:08.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce2 External PCI Bridge (rev a3)
0000:00:09.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation nForce2 IDE (rev a2)
0000:00:1e.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce2 AGP (rev c1)
0000:01:07.0 Ethernet controller: Digital Equipment Corporation DECchip 21142/43 (rev 41)
0000:01:09.0 Multimedia video controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Video Capture (rev 11)
0000:01:09.1 Multimedia controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Audio Capture (rev 11)
0000:01:0a.0 SCSI storage controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] 53c974 [PCscsi] (rev 10)
0000:01:0b.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
0000:02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV280 [Radeon 9200 SE] (rev 01)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I think the line
0000:01:07.0 Ethernet controller: Digital Equipment Corporation DECchip 21142/43 (rev 41)
is the only one relevant here, because this is the card that causes my pain, but works flawlessly under kernel 2.4.

One thing to note: I've got two PCs equipped with this card, both show exactly the same problems, and yes, I've made an image of my Knoppix CD, ran md5sum over the image, and compared the md5 with the one on the mirror (they match, so my CD is not to blame).

Please help me, I'm out of my latin :-(

P.S.: The last line of text that is displayed during boot if booting with kernel 2.6 is:
"Network device eth0 detected, DHCP broadcasting for IP."

P.S.: The output of lspci -v for this card is:


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
0000:01:07.0 Ethernet controller: Digital Equipment Corporation DECchip 21142/43 (rev 41)
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 96, IRQ 19
I/O ports at 9000 [size=128]
Memory at d8000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1K]
Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled] [size=256K]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Whatever all of this stuff means, I just dont have a clue about much of this information.)

[marhleet]

do a long
lspci -v
and check through all the assigned IRQ numbers.
see if the bios is doubling up on an IRQ, though IRQ 19 seems to say otherwise....

also, note the
0000:01:0b.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
did you need two cards ? or not notice the other one ?

[rolfhub]

Hi
First of all, thanks for your post.
I did quite a bit of research and I think I've found a work-around. It seems as if the wrong driver is being loaded, which crashes the system, but it works (for me) if I boot like that:

- boot Knoppix with "knoppix nodhcp"
- create a shell script with the following content:


pump --kill
ifconfig eth0 down
rmmod de4x5
modprobe tulip
pump

- run the shell script

I don't know yet if this has any side effects, but it is certainly better than nothing.

[CrashedAgain]

I think what is happening here is that the startup script /etc/init.d/knoppix-hd-autoconfig shuts down the ethernet card then is unable to restart it. I had this happen with knoppix 3.4 using the 2.6 kernel (see this post http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14325 ). The workaround is to edit knoppix-hd-autoconfig so it doesn't fiddle with eth0.

[rolfhub]

I don't think so because (as I understand it) the script /etc/init.d/knoppix-hd-autoconfig is only active when you install knoppix onto your HDD. So I think the cause for the problems is another one: On startup knoppix loads the wrong driver for the network card, one that is incompatible with the NIC. A solution would be if the knoppix-developers would modify the hardware-detect-mechanism to use the tulip driver instead of the de4x5 for the NICs that have this chip.
But I'm no Linux expert, so I could be wrong.