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Harry Kuhman
04-25-2003, 07:17 PM
I'm running Knoppix on an HP Ze4240 notebook that uses the Nat. Semi. DP83815 chip for it's internal nic. For several weeks I used Version 3.1 of Knoppix and it worked fine, total connections to the rest of my local network through a Linksys DSl router and on to the Internet. However, something has happened and Knoppix no longer works. I can't connect with Knoppix 3.2 and I can't even connect any more with the 3.1 CD! However WinXP uses the same hardware and connects just fine if I boot from hard drive rather than the Knoppix CD.

Knoppix isn't getting a DHCP setup. If I manually configure the card I can see it in ifconfig, but I see a TX error and a "carrier" error for every packet sent. I have also been able to determine that the nic is receiving packets just fine, but it is not really sending anything (confirmed by adding a hub and sniffing the wire with another system). I've changed the obvious things like cables and remote systems, and am 100% convinved that something in the notebook has changed in a way that is affecting Knoppix.

Clearly the Knoppix CD didn't change and the hardware still works with WinXP, but something is wrong. Maybe I'm on a wrong path here, but I learned that the DP83815 chip has EEPROM configuration memory and suspect that something has made a change to it that is breaking the Linux driver (actually, I suspect that it was a Windows "security update" that broke the system for Linux but so far can't confirm that).

HP has been useless on this. Their "support" people will not try to track down the original configuration settings for the DP83815 chip and simply respond that that information is "not available".

Which leads me here. I'm hoping that someone might have more insight into this problem, that someone might know something about the DP83815 driver in Linux and can help determine what needs to be done to get Linux talking through the nic again (I'm guessing it's as simple as a setting that is assumed to be right but could be set in software initalization), and how we can progress to get that done, tested and put back into the distribution.

I've technical, but very green to Linux and Knoppix (just starting using Knoppix as a way to get comfortable with Linux before I take windows off the hard drive or restrict it to a small partition). Any suggestions to next steps to take, or the right usenet group(s) to take this to would be extremely welcome.

Also, if anyone can determine what a working EEPROM configuration for a DP83815 eeprom is under knoppix, I would be extremely interested in those eeprom values.
Or if anyone has a contact in HP that might lead to someone in notebook engineering that could locate the configuration information, this would be extremely helpful.

aay
04-25-2003, 08:48 PM
I can't even connect any more with the 3.1 CD!

This is quite strange. Are you using the sam 3.1 CD that worked previously for you? And it still doesn't work? Since XP works fine and since you checked all your cables and connections, it surely does look like a hardware problem. I'm not sure how a XP update could cause anything like this, but I sure would be interested in hearing more about what you find out.

Another chanel of support you might try is irc.

irc.knoppix.net
/join #knoppix

Frankly I'm miffed. Do you have another NIC you could try?

Harry K
04-25-2003, 09:23 PM
Yup, I thought I made it clear, the same Knoppix CD that used to work now fails to transmit on the network on that computer that did work, even though WinXP can talk to the network just fine on that computer. CD works fine on other computers with different NIC chips. Knoppix 3.2 also fails, but I don't know for sure if that version ever did talk on the network OK. I'm pretty sure it did, but not 100% certain.

Since the National Semiconductor chip has EEPROM configuration info on it, a WinXP update (or perhaps something else) could indeed change the default configuration of this chip. If WinXp then over rides the default configuration at start-up but the Linux driver trusts the settings and does not override them, then WinXP works and Linux fails. Not that Micro$oft would ever do something like this deliberately, they are to nice and decent and honest of people for that .......

The NIC is built into the notebook, so can't just pop in a different one. Thought I had a D-link usb to ethernet adapter that I could use (although it would be slower). I plugged it in and Knoppix does indeed recognize it and use it, but it's apparently flakey, it dies after a few minutes. It also behaves this way under WinXP. I still need to confirm it fails on another computer, but it's not going to be an option. Have lots of normal nic cards around, but that's not going to help with a notebook.

I'm not an IRC user; don't think this is the right time to pick up a new vice. Is it really likely to get me to the right technical people that might help with this?

aay
04-25-2003, 11:07 PM
Harry,

What you are describing is really quite disturbing. If this is indeed the case then MS can just hang on to their trustworthy computing. I want nothing of it.

The more important question is how do you get help. I'm sorry I didn't notice that you are dealing with a notebook. Clearly slaping in another pci nic card isn't an option. I can also understand why you are not too excited about the usb option. Since your diagnosis of the problem indicates that that the ROM on the card itself has been updated, I'm not sure whether an XP reinstall (painful!) would help though perhaps it would put things back the way they were.

I found this page listing your card: http://www.national.com/pf/DP/DP83815.html

And then this page listing NS tech support:
http://www.national.com/support/dir.html

My suggestion is to try contacting their tech support and see if they know anything about this. The give a phone number and also give e-mail as a support option.

Man I really feel for you brother this is just plain wrong!

Harry J. Kuhman
04-26-2003, 12:29 AM
Yes, it is pretty disturbing. I'm certainly not sure that it has anything to do with the M "security updates", but it happened about the same time I finally was willing to download then in the new WinXP machine (which had run Knoppix fine for about 3-4 weeks without them), That's far from a cause and effct proof, but it would not be the first case of M$ doing things to their software to hurt other software writers that they took a dislike to, and Linux is high on their emeny list now. I'm still trying to gather information, thus the post.

I already had the pdf manual for the chip you pointed me to; it's quite extensive, but I'm making very slow progress with it. Don't know if it will be enough to solve the puzzle though. I hadn't thought of asking N.S. support about the configuration, but it's certainly an idea. I only went to HP support when I had figured out exactly the information that I needed, but their "technical support" people as taking a strong stance that it's completely imposiable for them to get the information that must exist within HP on how this nic is factory configured. I'm also working with other tools, including mii-diag, and will see what else I can come up with over the weekend. Maybe if I get a little more background over the weekend on the chip but still can't resolve anything I'll give NS a call next week. But honestly, I have the full specs for the chip in front of me. They are not likely to be able to tell me what options HP used in configuribg it, and the current configuration does work under WinXP, so they are not likely to find something extremely wrong with it. I don;t have high hopes that they will even want to help me, or if they do they will be able to do much.

All feedback on this issue is still requested from this forum.

aay
04-26-2003, 01:47 AM
I don;t have high hopes that they will even want to help me, or if they do they will be able to do much.

Sad but true. Don't let this discouage you from your move toward linux. I haven't really heard of anything like this before (at least on this list) so let's hope it's an isolated incident. Keep us posted.

aay
04-26-2003, 01:57 AM
One more thing...per previous irc advice... don't be afraid to visit the irc channel. I've learned a lot there. People in there are pretty curteous. It's a very good place to get help even if it's not on this issue.

guest
04-26-2003, 09:25 AM
You might just try turning everything off for 5 minutes - router, modem, laptop, etc. then start you router/modem then laptop. The router might be caching IP info.

Harry Kuhman
04-28-2003, 04:04 AM
You might just try turning everything off for 5 minutes
From what I previously posted I would have thought no one could come up with as lame of a "suggestion" as this. Sorry if that's insulting, but please reread all of the details that I first posted.

I do have new information, which greatly reinforces what I previously suspected. I've downloaded, compiler and run mii-diag and it reports some very strange configuration information: mii-diag reports that the card is currently set for 100baseTX in one line, and that it is set at 10BaseT in another! It also says Autro-negotiation is disabled. I know it was enabled before and negoiated properly both 100 megabit and 10 megabit connection, depending on if I connected directly into my Linksys at 100 or into a 3com hub at 10, so my theory that the configuration information for the DS83815 chip has changed is reinforced. mii-diag also reports "Internal Collision-Test enabled!" (exclaimation mark theirs), which I haven't figured out the meaning of.

However, I now can make the system work! I need to use 2 commands that I did not have to use previously: I need to do a "sudo mii-tool -r" to restart autonegotiation, and then I need to do a netcardconfig, and I'm able to talk to the network and Internet again.

So I believe this confirms that something has changed the default settings for the DP83815, and I strongly suspect that this is an organization out to harm Linux and promoting their own "Trusted Computing", which just happens to do things to your system when you load the security updates that keeps Linux from connection to the network.

I don't yet know how I can prove this until I can determine what to reset the eeprom to, once I do that I can revert to the recovery disks and then monitor the chip closely as I accept the security updates again. Any help getting these original settings (or finding someone at HP that is actually helpful and cares about their customers) would be very welcome.

Alternately, any feedback from others seeing this problem, particularly if they use both WinXP and Linux on the same computer, would be helpful. And suggestions of other forums, particularly the correct usenet forumn to take what I know so far, would be welcome.

stevethayne
04-28-2003, 01:52 PM
Hi,
I'm not at all technical. But there are a lot of echoes for me in your experience. I read your post after posting to this forum myself. But to recap - last week, I downloaded Knoppix 3.2 on a Windows XP system, was pleasantly surprised that it all just worked, and I connected to the internet fine via an ethernet card and cable modem. Since then, I have accepted Windows XP security updates (not had XP on here long). And on Saturday the same knoppix cd booted but would not connect to the net. For a non technical person, can you spell out how you got connected again (or point me to a forum where I could learn)? Also, if there is any information I can give that would help you prove your hypothesis, let me know.

Steve.

Harry Kuhman
04-28-2003, 07:13 PM
I'm not at all technical. But there are a lot of echoes for me in your experience. I read your post after posting to this forum myself. But to recap - last week, I downloaded Knoppix 3.2 on a Windows XP system, was pleasantly surprised that it all just worked, and I connected to the Internet fine via an ethernet card and cable modem. Since then, I have accepted Windows XP security updates (not had XP on here long). And on Saturday the same knoppix cd booted but would not connect to the net. For a non technical person, can you spell out how you got connected again (or point me to a forum where I could learn)? Also, if there is any information I can give that would help you prove your hypothesis, let me know.

Thanks for the feedback Steve. Very interesting, another case of a non-changeable CD not working after the WinXP "security updates". I sure hope we can do something about this. Some additional information from you might help: What computer are you using and what network interface does it use (for example, I'm using an HP ZE4240 notebook, it uses a built-in interface based on the National Semiconductor DP83815 chip). The network interface may take you a few minutes to track down but would be well worth it. The key thing here is to determine if the interface uses any EEPROM that a "security update" could deliberate set to a non-functional configuration. WinXP clearly is programmed to ignore the rom and reconfigure the network interface the way it wants (since WinXP runs on my car with a bad configuration in the EEPOM) while Linux reasonably trusts that the EEPROM configuration is correct and functional (as it was before you ran the "security updates". This may take you a little work, but again important to our tracking down and putting an end to this problem. A good place to start is http://www.scyld.com/diag/index.html. At the very least, post what nic interface you use and I'll try to track it down.

As to what I did to get around it, after getting and compiling several tools from the above site, I found that Knoppix includes a copy of mii-tool on the CD. Mii-diag from the above site is also handy, but you have to download it and the related C file, remount your hard drive partition in rw mode, compile the program (compile line given in the end of the source file), and then run it as superuser ("sudo mii-diag").
There are a number of options that give different information, but what I saw was that there was a clear conflict in the auto-negation settings and that the card was also no longer set to auto-negotiate.

Knowing this I needed to set the card right and/or re-enable auto-negotiation. I happened to stumble across the fact that Knoppix already has a compiled copy of Mii-tool in it, as well as the man page instructions for it. (I was using a 3.1 version at the time, I hope it's still in 3.2 but have not checked yet). The man pages gave the -r switch as the magic chant that restarts auto-negotiation. So I typed in "sudo mii-tool -r" and it informed me that the card was restarted! Now you still have to establish your card settings. This will depend on what you are connecting to. If you have a local network with a DHCP server (like the Linksys DSL/cable router I use) then you can do an automatic DHCP setup, if not you may have to manually do the settings. Either way it will be just what you did before you ran the "security updates" except that if you do have a DHCP server that happened automatically at boot for you and now you need to force it. You can either find the network card configuration under Knoppis in the menu (it moved between 3.1 and 3.2 but it's there and not too hard to find) or just type netcardconfig in to the shell (I sure hope I remember that right, if it fails find it in the menu). Configure eth0 for either DHCP or plug in the right values for the IP address, mask, gateway and the rest, and you should be back in operation, until you boot again and have to do it all over.

Please post back here with your experiences in doing this, we really need to get our facts together and put a stop to "security updates" that break our computers so we cannot run the software that we want on them!

stevethayne
04-28-2003, 07:26 PM
Hi,
Thanks for the advice and info. I will look up the information you requested once I get back into windows, but....I'm sending this from Knoppix! I had a pc net card in the system which I had intended to use to network 2 pc's over the phoneline. But this card also works as a nic. So I installed the drivers just now, reset the modem and booted up into Knoppix - had a net connection straight away, no need to change anything. Which again goes to support your theory that the problem was with something that had changed with the nic I normally use in xp.

steve.

Anssi
04-29-2003, 10:52 PM
mii-tool -r & netcardconfig didn't help me with my problems, i have also downloaded win xp security updates. I also tried dynebolic live-cd linux but i have same problems there -> no network connection.

Harry Kuhman
04-30-2003, 12:52 AM
Anssi,

That's bad news. The sudo mii-tool -r did work for me, but the difference might be the way that the NIC chip understand it's new "configuration information". Your might be in such a bad shape that the -r isn't enough to get it going again. You might still be able to force it along by other options in mii-tool or mii-diag. I would suggest using these tools to see what your current configuration has been set to, see what makes sense and what will have to be changed to get you back communicating again.

Also, it might be helpful if you could post what your nic is. Someone without the corruption yet might be able to use mi-diag or one of the card specific diagnostics at http://www.scyld.com/diag/index.html to look at their eeprom and tell you what the config settings should be.

Did the system work before and stop working when you did the "security updates" or had you not used Knoppix before you did the "security updates"?

stevethayne
04-30-2003, 11:36 AM
Hi Harry,

Sorry for the delay in responding. I'm not using a ready assembled computer, it's one assembled from parts by my brother who works in IT, all quality parts though. The network card, according to windows xp, is an amd pc net home based network adapter (generic). Am still trying to work out how to identify the network interface - have tried working through Properties of the card, but can't see it - am sure there's an obvious way to find it, but as I say, I'm not technical...

An aside - not sure if this is relevent. After connecting successfully through Knoppix to the net, as the result of installing the drivers for my AMD network card, I rebooted into xp - which would not reboot, until I chose the option to return to last settings that worked - these settings took out the amd network cards drivers.

Anssi
05-01-2003, 10:20 PM
My nic is Realtek RTL8139. I have not used Knoppix before i did the security updates.

aay
05-02-2003, 04:12 PM
My nic is Realtek RTL8139. I have not used Knoppix before i did the security updates.

This card should work. I have several of them and they work fine. Could you please post some more info on your system. It would be helpful if you opened a terminal and ran 'dmesg |less' Look for errors and post anything here.

---------------------------
EDIT
---------------------------

You'll want to look at Harry's other post here:

http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2117#9883

He mentions that 'sudo mii-tool -r' helped him so you might want to give that a try too.

Try 'man mii-tool' for some other options.

Ironi
05-04-2003, 09:27 PM
Harry, did you solve the problem with your NIC? I have two working DP83815 cards in my PII box if you need the correct EEPROM settings (not sure what you'd need exactly, though).

Anssi
05-04-2003, 10:36 PM
My nic is Realtek RTL8139. I have not used Knoppix before i did the security updates.

This card should work. I have several of them and they work fine. Could you please post some more info on your system. It would be helpful if you opened a terminal and ran 'dmesg |less' Look for errors and post anything here.


mii-tool -r didn't work.

my system is:

MSI sis 745 mainboard
Athlon XP 1700+
256 mb ddr
gf 4 mx 440 64mb
40gb harddrive
realtek network card
Telewell EA-200 ADSL modem (external)

dmesg errors: NETDEV watchdog: eth0 transmit timed out.

aay
05-05-2003, 12:22 AM
I find that if I need to know more about an error message, doing a search on the full message in google is often helpful.

I ran a search on your error and came up with the two following links which may offer some help. You can do a bit more searching there if these don't help.

http://lists.slug.org.au/archives/slug/2002/02/msg00360.html

http://www.tux.org/hypermail/linux-vortex/2001-Jun/0016.html (note the noapic option that you can try at boot)

Harry Kuhman
05-11-2003, 10:27 PM
Harry, did you solve the problem with your NIC? I have two working DP83815 cards in my PII box if you need the correct EEPROM settings (not sure what you'd need exactly, though).

Thanks for the offer. I've posted a more detailed response in the other, more general, thread on this issue titled Evidence WinXP "security updates" may break Linux. Let me know if I need to provide any other information. Looking forward to seeing what info you can come up with.

TigerDragon
05-23-2003, 03:03 AM
I have the HP Pavilion ze4125... it has the same natsemi chip as mentioned in this thread. I had trouble left and right getting a different live cd distro to work (lnx-bbc) but finally got a version that worked. 2.0 works on my laptop. Networking works with the trivial-net-setup script on that distro, but does NOT work at all on knoppix 3.2. It isn't getting dhcp leases from my router (a NetGear rp114.) I tried setting it up with "manual" options (both by the included netcardconfig script AND manually doing the ifconfig eth0 up and route add default gw etc......) and I can ping the 192.168.0.2 address I give the nic, but I can't ping the router (192.168.0.1) when I do this. With lnx-bbc2.0 I CAN get the network setup without any trouble, but Knoppix3.2 repeatedly will not work. The installed OS is WinXP Home and I do have autoupdates turned on, (and manually check periodically to ensure it's actually updating)

Perhaps if some of you who are having problems would try the lnx-bbc distro, if it works for you, then you know it's not necessarily something that Windows broke. If it doesn't then perhaps it is, but the lnx-bbc includes the diag tools mentioned earlier in this thread, so if it does NOT work, you can still use the diag tools to troubleshoot. I'd really like to get Knoppix working though since I need the extra toys for a project coming up.

Hope this helps some (maybe)

Harry Kuhman
05-23-2003, 03:48 AM
I have the HP Pavilion ze4125... it has the same natsemi chip as mentioned in this thread. I had trouble left and right getting a different live cd distro to work (lnx-bbc) but finally got a version that worked. 2.0 works on my laptop. Networking works with the trivial-net-setup script on that distro, but does NOT work at all on knoppix 3.2. It isn't getting dhcp leases from my router (a NetGear rp114.) I tried setting it up with "manual" options (both by the included netcardconfig script AND manually doing the ifconfig eth0 up and route add default gw etc......) and I can ping the 192.168.0.2 address I give the nic, but I can't ping the router (192.168.0.1) when I do this. With lnx-bbc2.0 I CAN get the network setup without any trouble, but Knoppix3.2 repeatedly will not work. The installed OS is WinXP Home and I do have autoupdates turned on, (and manually check periodically to ensure it's actually updating)

Perhaps if some of you who are having problems would try the lnx-bbc distro, if it works for you, then you know it's not necessarily something that Windows broke. If it doesn't then perhaps it is, but the lnx-bbc includes the diag tools mentioned earlier in this thread, so if it does NOT work, you can still use the diag tools to troubleshoot. I'd really like to get Knoppix working though since I need the extra toys for a project coming up.

Hope this helps some (maybe)
I'm downloading lnx-bbc2.0 now and will try it, but I take exception with your conclusion. lnx-bbc might well do some different nic setup than Knoppix, and in doing so make the card work when Knoppix doesn't. We know whatever has happened has not completely broken the nic, as Windows itself can still use the nic. BUt in my case Knoppix 3.1 did work fine, then it stopped working. I think 3.2 worked also, but I can't say that with 100% certainty. My 3.1 CDRs didn't change, something did. The eeprom configuration settings in the NIC simply no longer make sense. I DO NOT know for sure that it was Windows that did it, but it seems like the most likely canidate so far (and it happened very soon after I finally let WinXP download it's "security updates").

Once it is understood what is being changed, I expect more and more versions of Linux will be updated to work around the issue. But as that happens, it is not proof that Windows didn't change something that it should not have.

Your sysptom is somewhat different that what I saw, however. You stated that you could ping the nic. I cannot (until I do the mii-tool and netcardconfig commands). The nic in my HP notebook does receive traffic, but until I do the above commands it will not transmit properly; I'm very surprised that your symptoms are different. I'm using the same router as you, by the way, although I've gone through a hub in some of my tests (how can you ping the nic through the router if the router doesn't know which port 192.168.0.2 is connected to?). Have you watched the traffic to see where the DHCP fails? (In my case it was failing because I could see by watching the connection through the hub that the nic was never sending anything).

By the way, try using 192.168.1.2 instead of 192.168.0 2 unless you've changed the default address of your Linksys. The Linksys should normally be at 192.168.1.1. and should serve addresses with a mask of 255.255.255.0 , so 192.168.0.2 isn't really in a valid range for it. Obviously, if you have other computers on the router pick a higher address. How you could ping 192.168.0.2 is a real mystery.

StephenB
05-23-2003, 12:16 PM
Hi,

Did the security patch include an updated device driver for the card that 'updated' the eprom on the nic? Often M$ has a whole bunch of stuff in the same patch.

Stephen.

TigerDragon
05-23-2003, 03:16 PM
The device driver was not updated. The date for the driver is May 2002 and when I attempted a rollback there wasn't a previous driver to roll back to. However, Knoppix 3.2 doesn't have networking capabilitied where Lnx-BBC 2.0 does. As I said before, I can ping the eth0 device when I set it up manually, but I can't ping the router or anything else. I don't know how much this helps, but the more information available, the more likely we all are to figure this out.

TigerDragon
05-23-2003, 03:30 PM
Harry,
I understand that you say the 3.1 cd worked and then didn't. I'm not arguing that. I'm just trying to give more information to the problem at hand. I am using a NetGear (not a Linksys) and the default IP range is 192.168.0.x not 192.168.1.x...

I'm not pinging through the router, just setting up the nic with either "netcardconfig" with a manual config, or doing the ifconfig, route add, etc... myself without the script. I still have to manually set it up before I can ping it though (as should be the case given the card can't work without an address.) On a side note, I've never been able to get knoppix to work before. Usually it just crashes halfway through the boot process. 3.2 actually boots, but can't do the networking. I tried using mii-tool but when I passed in the parameters -F 100baseTx or -F 100baseTx-HD it gave me a usage statement...

Hope this helps some... probably not, but I tried.

Harry Kuhman
05-23-2003, 07:06 PM
Hi,

Did the security patch include an updated device driver for the card that 'updated' the eprom on the nic? Often M$ has a whole bunch of stuff in the same patch.

Stephen.

The Device Driver is never in the NIC, it's code in Windows. If they updated that it is not an issue, although there was no acknowlegement in the discription of the updates that they did.

A NIC can contain two different general types of eeprom or rom information. Some NICs support boot-from-network (often you'll see a NIC with an empty PROM socket on it; this socket is intended to hold a boot prom). This boot prom is used to identify the NIC to the network at boot time and allow a TFTP transfer of a boot image across the network, which the nic uses to get the booting computer started. Unless you are booting from the network this eeprom is not a factor (with Knoppix you are not, you are booting from CD). The other eeprom is generally a small 8 pin serial device. Most or all manufacturers now use this to hold the MAC address (which must be set uniquely for every NIC made) . Having this eeprom available, many (and this includes the Nat Semi chip in question) manufacturers also use it to hold configuration information.

In my case I have determined that the configuration information in my NIC no longer makes sense; it's not the way a manufacturer would want to configure the device). From what I have found so far it should still work, but in a very slow and crippled way (10 mbit half duplex) but it does not, so there must be more changes than I understand yet, the configuration information is somewhat hard for me to follow. No program, including a Windows "security update" should ever change this. It's interesting however that Windows over rides the now bad configuration information and runs the card at the full 100 mb full duplex setting. Knoppix defaults to using the card as it is configured, which fails.

Harry Kuhman
05-23-2003, 07:23 PM
Harry,
..... I am using a NetGear (not a Linksys) and the default IP range is 192.168.0.x not 192.168.1.x...

......I tried using mii-tool but when I passed in the parameters -F 100baseTx or -F 100baseTx-HD it gave me a usage statement...



Sorry about my confusion on your router, I was in need of sleep and didn't read close enough.

I did try LNX-BBC 2.0, but I'm not having good results there. It seems to boot fine on my HP Notebook, right up to the point where I'm told to log in as root. Then the keyboard does not respond! I've tried booting several times with the same result each time. I've also tried the same CD in my desktop system and I can boot there just fine. I have no idea why the HP keyboard isn't working, particularly when yours is.

I'm not using the 100baseTx command with mii-tool. I found that it was enough to use a -r command. It has to be done as root, so if you are using the normal shell Knoppix gives you try "sudo mii-tool -r". Then run netcardconfig and see if it can get a DHCP configuration for you.

As a fallback (I hope it's not needed), you might also try copying the trivial-net-setup script from lnx-bcc 2.0 to your hard disk, and then run it from Knoppix. But I expect it's doing much the same thing the two above commands are doing.

There is also another tool called ethtool in Knoppix 3.2 with release dates of 3-May-03 or newer. I'm still learning what all it will give me, but it looks like it might be helpful here if mii-tool isn't enough.

TigerDragon
05-24-2003, 03:00 AM
Harry,
To keep it from from freezing you need to set the bios to "Legacy USB Support: Disabled"... I spent a few months scratching my head as to why Lnx-BBC was freezing when some others weren't and some others were. It turned out to be that setting is Enabled by default in the bios and isn't useful for anything so... just disable it and the boot process will stop being a pain ;)

Also, as a side note, I downloaded and ran Slackware-Live and it sets up networking as well. mii-tool -r didn't help. It didn't give me a usage statement, but it didn't do anything useful either. Hope this helps somehow.

Harry Kuhman
05-28-2003, 07:22 PM
Harry,
To keep it from from freezing you need to set the bios to "Legacy USB Support: Disabled"... . just disable it and the boot process will stop being a pain ;)

Also, as a side note, I downloaded and ran Slackware-Live and it sets up networking as well. mii-tool -r didn't help. It didn't give me a usage statement, but it didn't do anything useful either. Hope this helps somehow.

I finally got some time to do some more testing last night. The good news: The USB Support trick did work and let me log into LNX-BBC. The bad news: even when I did this I still couldn't get a network connection with trivial-net-setup. It couldn't get a DHCP connection, and even when I set the paramaters manually I wasn't able to connect anywhere or even to ping another system on my network or even ping my Linksys router.

Of course, I have no past experience with it running before I took the Windows updates, so at least for me Knoppix is a better test case; the same software that used to work clearly no longer does.

I did a lot of work with ethtool as well, and will post some data as soon as I can edit it down into just the meaningful stuff.

And here's an interesting bit of news: There is a news story that just last Friday (long after this problem was first posted about here) Microsoft released a Windows Security Update that they now have retracted because some people found that it caused them to lose their network connection! They imply it's a software conflict with other code, but I really wonder - could it have been a further attempt to contine with what we've been seeing, but one that somehow affected some Windows users too?

Link to the story: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=528&u=/ap/20030527/ap_on_hi_te/microsoft_bug&printer=1

Harry Kuhman
05-28-2003, 09:49 PM
I have the HP Pavilion ze4125... it has the same natsemi chip as mentioned in this thread.

Ethtool (in Knoppix since the May 3 release) is giving me the following rerister values for my NIC:

Address Data
------- ------
0x00 0x3c08
0x01 0x2400
0x02 0x2cd0
0x03 0xcf82
0x04 0x0000
0x05 0x0000
0x06 0x0000
0x07 0x01a1
0x08 0x6630
0x09 0x41c8
0x0a 0xa098
0x0b 0x7d55

Could you please run sudo ethtool -e from a shell and tell me what your values are?

Harry Kuhman
05-28-2003, 09:53 PM
Harry, did you solve the problem with your NIC? I have two working DP83815 cards in my PII box if you need the correct EEPROM settings (not sure what you'd need exactly, though).

Could you also run the ethtool command (sudo ethtool -e) and tell me what you have for your nat-semi card(s) with that command? Thanks in advance. And are the cards still working for you with Knoppix?

My values should be in my previous post to TrigerDragon.

Robert
06-24-2003, 09:38 AM
It seems to be a lot of trouble with this network card. Sorry I don't understand everythings but I hope my trouble with this hardware can help you: by using knoppix on my HP Omnibook xe 4500 everything works well but not the access to the Network :( . So I decided to install Knoppix on my Harddrive. To save my "W2K-configuration" I want to save the disk with Ghost. To do this I create a dos-bootdisk with access on our Windows-network. Everything works well until I use ghost: he gives me an amazing time to save my datas (92 hours!). Spend a lot of time to find out why: the procedure works with many others of our Computers and Omnibooks too !! The fact: dowload from the network to my PC -> OK, upload from my PC to the networkdrives -> 1MB per minute !!!! The diag.exe givs me an EEPROM Checksum failur! I think it is not Knoppix that doesn't work but this Hardware from Nat. Semi.
Has somebody an idee how i could resolve this problem ?
Thank you and I wish all the best for Knoppix

roguestar191
06-28-2003, 10:07 AM
Thank you soooo much for finding this work around. I have Redhat linux 9.0 installed, it works fine for everything always. I recently downloaded Knoppix for some friends, and decided to try it out. My notebook uses the same network interface as yours, and wouldn't work. (It does in Redhat 9.0 using the default kernel as well as a custom built 2.4.21 with the latest working ACPI patch). Now it all works. Specs below.

HP Pavilion ZE4145
512M DDR SDRAM
16/32/64M Shared Video Memory
IGP320 Graphics Processor (No DRI support yet, POOEY!) (Reported as ATI Radeon Mobility U1)
40 Gig Hard drive
16x24x12x24 DVD+cd/rw

Pure Spiffieness

JamesX110
09-09-2003, 08:45 PM
I have an HP/Compaq nx9005 notebook and I have verified that I have the same network card as you and when I use knoppix I have never managed to get the internal NIC working.

The only way I can get onto the LAN is to plug in a 3Com PCMCIA card instead.

Before I used Knoppix I re-installed WinXP Pro and patched it up using the Windows Update feature, as a consequence I cannot say that it would have worked OK if I hadn't installed WinXP and Updated it.

I am sure though that M$ must have screwed my setup and if confirmed that M$ flashed one of my internal hardware's EEPROM's without my consent then Bill Gates has a smack in the mouth coming from me if I ever meet him 8)

I will try to use the mentioned fixes on the command line, but although I'm a techie I'm a Linux newbie so can't get to into things coz of lack of knowledge.

I'll post back if I get my NIC to function OK.

Laterz,

JamesX..................... 8)

Harry Kuhman
09-12-2003, 12:26 AM
I have an HP/Compaq nx9005 notebook and I have verified that I have the same network card as you and when I use knoppix I have never managed to get the internal NIC working.

The only way I can get onto the LAN is to plug in a 3Com PCMCIA card instead.

Before I used Knoppix I re-installed WinXP Pro and patched it up using the Windows Update feature, as a consequence I cannot say that it would have worked OK if I hadn't installed WinXP and Updated it.

I am sure though that M$ must have screwed my setup and if confirmed that M$ flashed one of my internal hardware's EEPROM's without my consent then Bill Gates has a smack in the mouth coming from me if I ever meet him 8)

I will try to use the mentioned fixes on the command line, but although I'm a techie I'm a Linux newbie so can't get to into things coz of lack of knowledge.

I'll post back if I get my NIC to function OK.

I can assure you that this NIC did work when I first tried it with Knoppix, although it stopped after I did the security updates.

There is more on this subject in the other thread at
http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2164

Try sudo mii-tool -r and then netcardconfig first, this should work. If not, or if you just want to try something else, try booting Knoppix with the expert option and answering all questions n. Please do let us know what progress you make.

shiyang
09-12-2003, 11:54 PM
Is there a way to auto run the commands "sudo mii-tool -r" and also reconnect to the DHCP server via netcardcfg?

Is this only possible on HD install?.. if so.. how?

thanks

mf6
09-16-2003, 09:16 PM
I've same computer as JamesX110, and same problem, but i'm sure it's not a M$ problem (or -at least- not only): I've booted a new laptop (without initialize the original XP system) with SystemRescueCD, and eth0 don't work until i do a mii-tool -R -r. May be a driver's problem.

Any body know a module's op to force a hardware reset on natsemi.o?

Miguel.

Harry Kuhman
09-16-2003, 09:57 PM
I've same computer as JamesX110, and same problem, but i'm sure it's not a M$ problem (or -at least- not only): I've booted a new laptop (without initialize the original XP system) with SystemRescueCD, and eth0 don't work until i do a mii-tool -R -r. May be a driver's problem.

I know in my case it wasn't a driver problem. Knoppix worked fine on my new notebook and connected to the other computers on my network and to the Internet fine. After I did the Windows security update I could no longer connect, with any of the same CDRs that I had previously used on the notebook.

It could still be a Windows issue. Sure, you may not have run the provided Windows software, but do you think that the manufactured didn't run this computer at all before copying a "virgin" copy of Windows and their bundled stuff onto the hard drive and shipping it? If what was run on your machine before it was shipped was newer that what was run on mine, that could well explain why I had to run the Windows Update function before my NIC EEPROM settings were screwed, but yours came pre-screwed.



Any body know a module's op to force a hardware reset on natsemi.o?

Miguel.

That a big maybe for this question. Take a look at the Nat. Semi. diagnostic here: http://www.scyld.com/diag
You'll have to download the source and compile it yourself, but it compiles fine under Knoppix (once you make a partition writeable). Read all the source. The beginning of the source documents several options, including ones that would let you save and restore the eeprom settings. But so far I haven't been able to find anyone who knows what the original settings are (were) or saved them, so I don't have anything to restore.

But if you keep reading the sources, in the actual code (not the comments at the beginning that document the switches) you'll find mention of another switch "-E" that is apparently an "emergency_rewrite". As far as I can tell this command will restore the eeprom to some generic settings that should be safe. But I haven't run it myself.

The owner of scyld.com is a highly recognized Linux contributor, particularly in the area of NIC drivers. If you're going to try something that writes to your notebook NIC, his code is certainly to be trusted more than much other code (particularly Windows!).

If you do decide to try this "emergency" fix, please let us know the results. And please also use the same program to dump the contents of the working NIC EEPROM (it wouldn't be a bad idea to dump and save what's in your EEPROM before you start, too) and post those contents here. And let us know if you do intend to ever run Windows, and if you do, if Windows changes your NIC EEPROM settings again when you do or when you accept the "security updates".

Harry

H1ghlander
09-17-2003, 08:09 AM
I've got an HP ZE5185 (2.4G P4, 512M, 20G drive, with the Nat Semi network port),
and I've got the same problem with the network, it just doesn't configure. Possibly, because
I'm on a shared 10mb network, maybe the autonegotiation isn't working, but the card
works on the same network in both XP and Solaris 9/X86 (with a non-sun driver).
Go figure. The rest of it is pretty cool. I saw a couple of things in german that were unexpected
but for the most part it's pretty neat. I'll give a shot by putting my wireless router in front
of the 10mb shared and see if a switched network makes it better. Also, my TDK Global 56k
modem would hang the 07/23/03 version, but was recognized in the 09/08/03 version.
It didn't recognize my new DLink DWL-AG650, but I wasn't too surprised about that.

Harry Kuhman
09-17-2003, 09:28 AM
I've got an HP ZE5185 (2.4G P4, 512M, 20G drive, with the Nat Semi network port),
and I've got the same problem with the network, it just doesn't configure. Possibly, because
I'm on a shared 10mb network, maybe the autonegotiation isn't working, but the card
works on the same network in both XP and Solaris 9/X86 (with a non-sun driver)
You're right about it being an autonegoitation issue; when I picked through what had been done to the eeprom I found that the eeprom settings were in a configuration that would screw up autonegotiation. But it really didn't matter what network I tried it on; I ran it to a 10/100 switch that would have negoiated anything the NIC wanted to talk and it just couldn't work anything out. I also ran it into a 10 mbit hub that only runs at 10 mbit, and the NIC couldn't work that out either. Wouldn't talk to several other computers straight in with a cross over cable either. The notebook had talked to both the 10/100 switch and the 10 hub before running the Windows "security update". So I doubt in your case that you would find you connected any better on a different network, but if you poke around at the register level I'm pretty sure you'll find that autonegotiation isn't working right.

As to it working with both XP and Solaris, I'm not surprised. I think you'll even find that it works with some versions of Linux. What I believe is happening is this: The eeprom settings are now in a bogus default state. If the driver doesn't use the eeprom defaults but rather resets the registers to what it wants, the NIC will work. If the driver trusts the eeprom settings, then it will fail. Normally one would think you should trust the eeprom settings, after all, why have a way to configure the NIC in eeprom and then defeat it? That seems to be what Knoppix does at start-up, and when it does it the NIC fails. However, Windows XP overrides the eeprom settings (kinda like they knew they had been screwed up) and so it works fine. And things like the command sudo mii-tool -r also are designed to reset the NIC settings, so after a mii-tool reset most people seem to be able to get past this problem too. Solaris (and versions of Linux that work fine) might also bring up the NIC with it's own settings rather than the eeprom power up settings, or it might even be making a call to something like mii-tool to be sure the device is reset during boot, which would defeat the ability to use eeprom settings to configure the NIC, but would also also prevent update software from having a bad effect by screwing up the NIC (the eeprom would still get screwed over, but if the booting software resets the bad values the NIC still works). You give up the configuration ability that almost no one ever really uses for security from the attack against the eeprom.

It's also interesting to note that while the eeproms are getting changed to things that make no sense for the chipset, the MAC address (also stored in that eeprom) never seems to ever get changed. Mine is certainly the same as it was when I first got the notebook (confirmed this from logs when I had the problem). Wonder why this would happen? My expectation is that the software screwing up the eeprom dare not mess with the MAC address, which it need too. And it better not store the MAC adress elsewhere and then muck up the eeprom AMC address, since a reinstall of the software would leave it without it's backup copy of the MAC address. So the eeprom MAC address is likely safe, but any other eeprom settings are targeted.

H1ghlander
09-18-2003, 03:28 AM
Not sure what's different between Knoppix and Morphix, but Morphix was able to configure the NS83815 (I'm using it right now). Maybe we can figure out what they're doing to make this work better.

H1ghlander
09-20-2003, 06:11 AM
I've got an HP ZE5185 (2.4G P4, 512M, 20G drive, with the Nat Semi network port),
and I've got the same problem with the network, it just doesn't configure. Possibly, because
I'm on a shared 10mb network, maybe the autonegotiation isn't working, but the card
works on the same network in both XP and Solaris 9/X86 (with a non-sun driver)
You're right about it being an autonegoitation issue; when I picked through what had been done to the eeprom I found that the eeprom settings were in a configuration that would screw up autonegotiation. But it really didn't matter what network I tried it on; I ran it to a 10/100 switch that would have negoiated anything the NIC wanted to talk and it just couldn't work anything out. I also ran it into a 10 mbit hub that only runs at 10 mbit, and the NIC couldn't work that out either. Wouldn't talk to several other computers straight in with a cross over cable either. The notebook had talked to both the 10/100 switch and the 10 hub before running the Windows "security update". So I doubt in your case that you would find you connected any better on a different network, but if you poke around at the register level I'm pretty sure you'll find that autonegotiation isn't working right.


Weirder yet, I booted 07/23 version on my HP ZE4100 (same kind of config, but builtin wlan and IGP-340 Radeon card). I thought it was hooked up to the switch, but it wasn't. I then connected it to the switch, and I now have connectivity
in Knoppix, once I told Knoppix what the appropriate network info is.

Harry Kuhman
09-20-2003, 06:43 AM
Weirder yet, I booted 07/23 version on my HP ZE4100 .... I then connected it to the switch, and I now have connectivity in Knoppix, once I told Knoppix what the appropriate network info is.
That doesn't strike me as weird at all. It just sounds to me like a certain brand of evil software hasn't screwed your ZE4100 yet liike it did to your ZE5185. That's not to say that it will not; I ran my HP notebook for a while swapping between both systems and each worked fine. Then the Knoppix CD that always worked stopped working, as did other Knoppix CD copies I also had.

I would urge you to go to the website http://www.scyld.com/diag/ and get the nat semi diagnostics program and also the mii-diag program. Before you boot windows again on this system I would ask that you compile and run both of these programs with as many options as you can find (read the source to find all kinds of good options), and redirect all output to files that you can keep as a record. You'll be very very glad you have this information if the ZE4100 stops working later; you should be able to dump the eeprom settings now and reload them later. And this would certainly allow us to prove what is happening if you make note of when the problem first occurs (assuming, of course, if it does).

I would also say check closely if the two notebooks use the same chip. If it indeed does, you may be able to load the saved eeprom file into the ZE5185. And if you get this information, I would really appreciate it if you could send me a copy of everything; it might give me the information about the eeprom contents that I can't get from HP that would let me use the programs from www.scyld.com to reload my eeprom. And if I can get that working again I'll grab the new XP updates, and even reinstall all of the original software from the CD's that HP provided so that I can re-accept all of the "security updates" again and prove once and for all what is actually happening.

Of course, there could also be some BIOS issues that deal with the NIC differently in the ZE4100 than the ZE5185. I know my BIOS in my 4240 is extremely limited and more so than in many other HP Pavilion notebooks. I don't even have the "secret" diagnostics built into my system that many HP Pavilion notebooks do. Anything you can learn about the BIOS in each notebook might help too.

H1ghlander
09-30-2003, 12:30 PM
This output is from my ze4100 with the NatSemi DP83815 10/100 network running Knoppix 3.3 connected to a linksys 54G wireless router (though it's connected on a wired port). It came up the first time. I'll also post the results from my ZE5185 which had the problem next.


ethtool -e eth1

Address Data
------- ------
0x00 0x103c
0x01 0x002a
0x02 0x2cd0
0x03 0xcf82
0x04 0x0000
0x05 0x0000
0x06 0x0000
0x07 0x0007
0x08 0xf3b1
0x09 0xee74
0x0a 0xa098
0x0b 0xa355


hope this helps.

H1ghlander
09-30-2003, 01:43 PM
Here is the startup from my HP ZE5185, and connected to the same Linksys wireless router from the test with my ZE4100 (on the wired port, of course), the port did not start. This was booted cold, so no eeprom settings from XP may have been left over.


Initial "ethtool -e eth0"

Address Data
------- ------
0x00 0x103c
0x01 0x0029
0x02 0x2cd0
0x03 0xcf82
0x04 0x0000
0x05 0x0000
0x06 0x0000
0x07 0x0007
0x08 0xf2b0
0x09 0x8890
0x0a 0xa098
0x0b 0xf055


Initial "ifconfig eth0"


eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:C0:9F:1A:22:12
BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:6 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
Interrupt:11 Base address:0x7000


did a "mii-tool -r; ethtool -e eth0"

restarting autonegotiation...

Address Data
------- ------
0x00 0x103c
0x01 0x0029
0x02 0x2cd0
0x03 0xcf82
0x04 0x0000
0x05 0x0000
0x06 0x0000
0x07 0x0007
0x08 0xf2b0
0x09 0x8890
0x0a 0xa098
0x0b 0xf055


did a "netcardconfig" (selecting dhcp broadcast)


Sending DHCP broadcast from device eth0 OK.


these are the settings from "ethtool -e eth0" after the "mii-tool -r" and "netcardconfig"


Address Data
------- ------
0x00 0x103c
0x01 0x0029
0x02 0x2cd0
0x03 0xcf82
0x04 0x0000
0x05 0x0000
0x06 0x0000
0x07 0x0007
0x08 0xf2b0
0x09 0x8890
0x0a 0xa098
0x0b 0xf055


and I have a working interface after this procedure from "ifconfig eth0"


eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:C0:9F:1A:22:12
inet addr:192.168.3.2 Bcast:192.168.3.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:7 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:5 errors:0 dropped:6 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
RX bytes:2131 (2.0 KiB) TX bytes:1648 (1.6 KiB)
Interrupt:11 Base address:0x7000


What's weird is I don't see any changes in the register settings, despite that once renegotiation is reset, it just works. Maybe the thing to do is check the settings vs the ZE4100 which does work from a cold boot, and has not had it's driver updated in XP. Again, this interface works in MorphixCombined-Gnome-0.4.x so perhaps there's something they're doing differently.

Harry Kuhman
10-01-2003, 12:58 AM
... Maybe the thing to do is check the settings vs the ZE4100 which does work from a cold boot, and has not had it's driver updated in XP. ....

Yup, I would certainly get the information from the notebook that does still work, both to compair with this notebook (if you're sure they both use the same chip in the NIC) and also so you have it in case Windows does something to the working notebook someday. I would also suggest using mii-diag and natsemi-diag from http://www.scyld.com/diag/index.html and getting the rom values from both of these programs.

H1ghlander
10-01-2003, 02:55 AM
Check out the last post on page 3. That has the ethtool -e output from the ZE4100 which works correctly. There are definitely some registers that are different. However, I don't have a clue what those difference mean.

Harry Kuhman
10-01-2003, 05:21 AM
Check out the last post on page 3. That has the ethtool -e output from the ZE4100 which works correctly. There are definitely some registers that are different. However, I don't have a clue what those difference mean.

I have the documentation for the DP83815 chip (available as a PDF from the Nat.Semi. site). I'll try to make some sense out of what your ZE4100 settings are telling us and contrast then to the other NIC. It may take me a few days to get to it and the documentation is 108 pages and most of that is setting up the nic registers (and somewhat cryptic to me), so please be patient and don't expect any answers tonight or tomorrow. I would still suggest that you also check what the other programs I mentioned above give you. I don't know why, but I got different results on my NIC from the differet tools. I'm more inclined to trust the other two tools, particularly the natsemi-diag that is made for a natsemi chip (but also the mii-diag) over ethtool when the programs do not agree.

What I really would like you to do if you are willing is to run the natsemi-diag on both notebooks with both the -e and -ee options (-ee seems to be needed to get the raw data, which is what we'll want to put back into the corrupted eeproms). The -e option will also give us an interpeted discription of what it thinks the eeproms are set for, which should be a big help. natsemi-diag does need to be run as root or with the sudo command prefix. And if you are brave you might want to try the -E option (which from reading the source code I find should do an "emergency rewrite" of the eeprom, which might resolve this for us.) Having the mii-tool -r work around, I haven't been brave enough to try this yet.

If we can get the eeprom values right again, then at power up the registers should be put in a valid mode. The National Semi NIC does work under Knoppix (as your ZE4100 shows and my 4240 did show before I ran the "security updates").

Harry Kuhman
10-01-2003, 05:31 AM
......
these are the settings from "ethtool -e eth0" after the "mii-tool -r" and "netcardconfig"
.......

That ethtool -e is giving you different values after these commands makes think that it's not really giving us eeprom settings at all (which should not change) but rather register settings. Yes, the documentation says it should dump the eeprom, but then you would get the same values each time. This is a further reason why I trust natsemi-diag over ethtool.

Harry Kuhman
10-01-2003, 06:41 AM
...What's weird is I don't see any changes in the register settings, despite that once renegotiation is reset, it just works. ......
OK, I misunderstood what you were saying in the last post, once I actually started picking through the sets of data you posted I see thay are all the same. That is not weird if indeed they are eeprom values (as claimed) and not registers. I don't know if you're looking at registers with another tool or if you are thinking these values should be the chip registers, but what we care about to fix the problem is the eeprom values. While I had to use the DP83815 documentation and the register contents to see that the NIC was not being set correctly to auto-negotiate (as best as I can tell from the documentation), what we really need to figure out is not a good set of register settings (which we could get by looking at the registers once we kick one of these nics into working again), but rather the eeprom settings that let the registers get set up right.

I'll try to make sense of these values, maybe they will make more sense for your notebook than they did for mine, but I'm still hoping you can get the settings as reported by the national semi diag program -ee command.

Harry Kuhman
10-07-2003, 08:05 PM
This output is from my ze4100 with the NatSemi DP83815 .... I'll also post the results from my ZE5185 which had the problem next.


ethtool -e eth1

Address Data
------- ------
0x00 0x103c
0x01 0x002a
...




Actually, the mystery deepens after looking at your settings. The doc calls these first two words of data the Configuration subsystem. While you have a 103c here in both devices, (which the natsemidiag indicates is a vendor code) I have a 3c08 - but the Natsemidiag reports a 103c for me in the same location!!!

We don't seem to have any conflict in locations 02-06.

07-09 are for the MAC address, so this will be different for each device.

0a always seems to match for both of us.

0b contains the checksum, which includes the mac address so will be different for each of us.

That seems to indicate the only "strange" settings are the CFGSID or Configuration Subsystem Identification Register. How this is causing problems, or even if it is, is not clear yet. I'm still hoping that you will post the results from the -ee option on the natsemidiag program, which seems to get very different results looking at these same locations than the generic ethtool does.

Also, I quoted your above post because I wanted to ask about the eth1 reference. In your other posts you list eth0, as I would have expected and as I have been using. In this case you listed eth1. Is there a reason for this? Was it just a typo? Are you by any chance looking at a different NIC added to the notebook and not the original factory installed NIC?

H1ghlander
10-07-2003, 11:08 PM
That seems to indicate the only "strange" settings are the CFGSID or Configuration Subsystem Identification Register. How this is causing problems, or even if it is, is not clear yet. I'm still hoping that you will post the results from the -ee option on the natsemidiag program, which seems to get very different results looking at these same locations than the generic ethtool does.

Also, I quoted your above post because I wanted to ask about the eth1 reference. In your other posts you list eth0, as I would have expected and as I have been using. In this case you listed eth1. Is there a reason for this? Was it just a typo? Are you by any chance looking at a different NIC added to the notebook and not the original factory installed NIC?

The ZE4100 has a miniPCI wireless and it seems to come up as eth0. I also found out last night as I was updating XP, that there was an update for the LanExpress (DP83815) controller, so I did not install it.

I installed MorphixCombined-Gnome-0.4.1, and did a bunch of configurations and apt-gets. I was able to find mii-diag as a dpkg, but can't find a natsemi-diag dpkg (though I admit to not looking too hard as I 'm not very familiar with Debian). If I can't find one, I'll have to apt-get the compiler and build it by hand. If you have a pointer, I can get the diags for the ZE4100 in the next day or so. I will have to play with the ZE5185 to get the register settings for that.

Harry Kuhman
10-08-2003, 12:09 AM
If you have a pointer, I can get the diags for the ZE4100 in the next day or so.
The diags are at
http://www.scyld.com/diag/index.html

The diag I seem to have best results with is
ftp://ftp.scyld.com/pub/diag/natsemi-diag.c

Instructions for compiling are at the end of the C code.

No need to ap-get a compiler, it compiles fine from knoppix if you just type in the given line (of course, you have to mount the disk where you store the file as read/write first).

nighty
10-17-2003, 11:13 PM
YESSS thanks for sudo mii-tool -r :)

it's working on my hp nx9005

Harry Kuhman
10-18-2003, 12:09 AM
YESSS thanks for sudo mii-tool -r :)

it's working on my hp nx9005

Thanks for that report. Did Knoppix networking ever work on that system? If so, do you know when it stopped working?

Just looked up the nx9005, looks like it has a couple of nice features that my hp notebook lacks (firewire and 2 PC card slots rather than the one I have). What did it set you back(and what currency if not US dollars)?

H1ghlander
10-28-2003, 12:03 PM
Here ya go.
.

/natsemi-diag -aa -f

natsemi-diag.c:v2.07 12/17/2002 Donald Becker (becker@scyld.com)
http://www.scyld.com/diag/index.html
Index #1: Found a NatSemi DP83815 adapter at 0x2400.
Natsemi 83815 series with station address 00:c0:9f:1b:ef:5c
Transceiver setting Autonegotation advertise 10/100 Mbps half and full duplex.
NatSemi DP83815 chip registers at 0x2400
0x000: 00000004 e805e000 00000002 00000000 00000000 00f1cd65 00000001 00000000
0x020: 210a72a0 d0f01002 00000000 00000000 210a71b0 10700020 00000000 00008000
0x040: 0080000a 00200000 40000004 00005cef ffff0004 3f3f3f3f 00000505 00000000
0x060: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
0x080: 00003100 0000786d 00002000 00005c21 000005e1 000045e1 00000005 00002801
0x0A0: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
0x0C0: 00000615 00000002 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000100 00000030
0x0E0: 00000000 000000bf 00000804 00008200 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
No interrupt sources are pending (00000000).
Receive mode is 0xc8200000: Normal unicast and hashed multicast.
Rx filter contents: c000 1b9f 5cef 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000

stevethayne
10-14-2004, 10:41 AM
Hi Harry,
Long time since this thread was last used, but thought I would post to update. Knoppix 3.3 now seems to connect to the internet first time every time but only if I exit xp by clicking restart, and have the cd in the tray ready to boot.

Steve.

Harry Kuhman
10-14-2004, 10:58 AM
.....Knoppix 3.3 now seems to connect to the internet first time every time but only if I exit xp by clicking restart, and have the cd in the tray ready to boot.

Steve.
Hi Steve,

Glad to hear it's working better for you. In my case, on the notebook that once booted fine but stopped connecting to the 'net after a "security update", my situation changed in the other direction. Knoppix would hang completely for me on boot, blank screen, never finish. I couldn't use the newer versions for quite some time. Finally I found that if I used a combination of two cheat codes, noscsi and acpi=off, Knoppix would boot OK. Since the acpi=off also was one of the ways that I could get around the NIC setup issue in the past, this "fix" aslo lets me use the NIC, but it's certainly a pain to have to do each time I boot from CD. It's not clear to me why I now need the cheat codes, but it's certainly something in the newer Knoppix release (the old CD's boot fine, but, of course, the same old CD's that used to let me on the 'net without any extra steps still need the cheat codes or the reset trick to get the NIC set up right now).

Harry

ol fart
02-21-2006, 08:26 AM
This thread should be named natsemi & DP83815 network start failures. Previously, it was posted in this thread, "dmesg errors: NETDEV watchdog: eth0 transmit timed out." I think there is a large clue in this message.
I have experienced this problem on Compaq Presario 2190US with knoppix and gentoo live-cd's.
I have observed that even if the nodhcp option is entered on the command line, gentoo searches for a network assignment, as does knoppix.
I don't have time to prove it, but it appears to me the natsemi driver deserves first place for examination for the source of the transmit time out. And ifconfig, which does not actually bring up a timed out DP83815 eth0 fully, deserves a close second place. This problem is wasting a lot of people's time and deserves highlighting in installation documentation, in any case.

Harry Kuhman
02-21-2006, 08:50 AM
I have experienced this problem on Compaq Presario 2190US with knoppix and gentoo live-cd's....
Wow, you found a pretty old thread. It could have been named a lot of things; if I were to go back and change it I think I would use something like "Knoppix can no longer use my NIC, but only after running a Windows security update". If you are interested in this topic you might want to also look at this thread (http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2164&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0) where more of the problem has been discussed. I do not have a final fix for the problem and my HP notebook still has this problem with old versions of Knoppix. But newer versions seem to be doing their startup logic differently (I don't think they use the configuration logic stored in the eeprom any more) and I personally have no had this problem since about 3.8 and others don't seem to be posting about it.

ol fart
02-22-2006, 12:34 AM
Posts going away does not necessarily mean problems have gone away. It just means people have gone away.

Version 4 knoppix does not properly network on a presario 2190 using a westell 2200 set for connection always on and dhcp enabled or disabled, without IF passthrough. With or without static NAT. MS ME on the desktop connects regardless of these settings on the westell. It properly obtains an IP in the 192.168.1.1-253 range when DHCP is enabled. It does not have to be powered down between changes. If the westell is set for static NAT to 192.168.1.1 and DHCP is disabled, and the IP on the destop is changed to 192.168.1.2, the westell connects to the new IP but does not update the static NAT IP unless it is disabled and then enabled, when it shows the static NAT connection by hostname. In any case, the network card is not turned off. This cannot be said of the knoppix v4 implementation. DHCP does not properly obtain an IP or a lease from a westell 2200 and, on failure is interacting with the network card drivers and registers to cause yawns and deep sleeps. Maybe, after netcardconfig,

cat /proc/interrupts
/etc/init.d/net.eth0 zap
/etc/init.d/net.eth0 start

There are more than apic problems in the kernel cured by apic=off involved here. My beef is that ifconfig is not written to do a proper inventory of the state of the interface when invoked with the up command.

If I were not bound and determined to get away from MS, I would not tolerate a hundredth of this aggravation. I am going to the gentoo forums with this. Perhaps these specifics will assist someone. Best wishes to all here.

bustedup
05-27-2006, 10:29 AM
Glad someone raised this from the dead before I did :)

I have this exact NS DP 83815 network chipset and problem :( . It is on a HP xt4300 Laptop. I was hoping someone could help me out. I know this is a Linux forum, and I'm running NT5. I used all the versions of drivers I could find and a clean install on each. No dice. It gets assigned an IP address, and will not connect to anything (I am trying to connect directly to a cable modem via network cable). If I try to release or renew the IP in ipconfig, it returns an error saying it cannot connect to DHCP server. I have also tried E:\>work or I will punt you out the freaking window; but, that had nary an effect also. Won't even speak of the worthless phone techs who couldn't figure this out either. Any ideas? I'm on my last leg here