Knoppix using NatSemi DP83815 stopped working

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.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Harry Kuhman

I can't even connect any more with the 3.1 CD!

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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?

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?

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!

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.

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Originally Posted by Harry J. Kuhman

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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You might just try turning everything off for 5 minutes

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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.

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.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by stevethayne

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.

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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!

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.

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.

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"?

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.

My nic is Realtek RTL8139. I have not used Knoppix before i did the security updates.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Anssi

My nic is Realtek RTL8139. I have not used Knoppix before i did the security updates.

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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.

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EDIT
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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.

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).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by aay

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Anssi

My nic is Realtek RTL8139. I have not used Knoppix before i did the security updates.

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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.

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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.

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/sl.../msg00360.html

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

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ironi

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).

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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.

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)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TigerDragon

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)

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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.

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 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.

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.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by StephenB

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.

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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.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TigerDragon

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...

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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.

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.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TigerDragon

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.

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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=stor..._bug&printer=1

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TigerDragon

I have the HP Pavilion ze4125... it has the same natsemi chip as mentioned in this thread.

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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?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ironi

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).

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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.

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

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

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)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by JamesX110

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.

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

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.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by mf6

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.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by mf6

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

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.