n00b questions - ubuntu - NIC redetection

Capt'n Midnight

Ubuntu 6.6
I'm trying to install a network card, and all Mr Google shows is stuff on wireless cards or on how get IP working on eth0, and I can't for the life of me find stuff on how to get eth0 recognised. ( used my old trick of iwconfig to see if it would at list eth0 as not having wireless extensions, but nada.

The card was working fine, then stopped working. The RJ45 connector is coming away from the PCB, which is not a good thing so I popped in a new PCI NIC.

I can see the new card with lspci

How do I do a hardware re-detection for a specific device / or for all devices ?

BTW:
If you're a windows user trying ubuntu have a look at http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Dapper ( I've just installed IE 6 :rolleyes: )

oscarBravo

I'm surprised it doesn't Just Work. What does 'ip link list' show?

generalmiaow

indeed, what does "ifconfig" get you? also, what does dmesg say about the card?

Capt'n Midnight

I doubt it's an IP problem, the device doesn't have a driver loaded,
when the driver is loaded, I may then have an ip problem.

It's like the google searches - LOADS of stuff on IP/Aliases/Wifi/binding IP to second NIC, I'm finding it dang hard to filter out info on manually adding a new NIC driver.

*me bangs head on desk,*

ifconfig only lists lo
tbh I use iwconfig because of the number of times it listed cards that ifconfig didn't yet list till the ip was sorted

the driver is not listed in "device manager" or lsmod
lspci lists the card by brand but not by model

didn't get a chance to lookup dmesg as am not near the machine now

oscarBravo

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

I doubt it's an IP problem, the device doesn't have a driver loaded,
when the driver is loaded, I may then have an ip problem.

I didn't say anything about an IP problem. "ip link" operates on interfaces (layer 1); "ip neighbor" on ARP (layer 2), "ip addr" and "ip route" on IP stuff (layer 3).

dmesg is your next step. What's the make/model/chipset of the card?

Capt'n Midnight

will retry again when at it

this is the sort of thing I'm looking for
http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Debian/hardware-detection.html

ressem

Probe for devices
#discover --enable-all -d

Should include a line like
Found BROADCOM Corporation BCM4401 100Base-T (ethernet)

Loading the appropriate drive, if you know it's name is

#modprobe -a -v b44

where b44 is for the broadcom above

will result in the kernel loading this module
insmod /lib/modules/2.6.15-26-386/kernel/drivers/net/b44.ko

then
#/etc/init.d/networking restart

will run the scripts to do dhcp discovery etc.

If the system worked at the start then perhaps running a cd bootable knoppix should help to identify the correct driver to use instead of b44.
#lsmod | grep mii
on a working 2.6 setup will often give you the network driver without having to browse through pages of mods.

Capt'n Midnight

Ta.

ressem

Bit of googling. Better way might be
Identify your card using
#lspci -v
gives
0000:00:09.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401 100Base-T (rev 01)

#lspci -v -n
gives the pci device id as
0000:00:09.0 0200: 14e4:4401 (rev 01)

There will be a line in the modules.pcimap that matches this id with a driver module name
# grep 4401 /lib/modules/2.6.15-26-386/modules.pcimap

b44 0x000014e4 0x00004401 0xffffffff 0xffffffff 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x0

Giving you the name of the driver to feed to modprobe or insmod

niallb

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

ifconfig only lists lo
tbh I use iwconfig because of the number of times it listed cards that ifconfig didn't yet list till the ip was sorted

ifconfig -a will list all interfaces with drivers whether they have an IP or not.
What is the card?
You say you can see it with lspci, but don't say what it is.
Let us know, it might just be an awkward one.

If a driver seems to be loaded, try mii-diag to see if it's having a problem negotiating a link.

NiallB

Steveire

sudo aptitude install linux-restricted-modules-$(uname -r)

I'm using edgy, so my kernel version is different, but the right stuff should be in there in the 2.6.15 or whatever you have. I'm guessing you have an atheros card.

$ sudo aptitude show linux-restricted-modules-$(uname -r)
Package: linux-restricted-modules-2.6.17-10-386
State: installed
Automatically installed: no
Version: 2.6.17.5-5
Priority: optional
Section: restricted/misc
Maintainer: Ubuntu Kernel Team <kernel-team@lists.ubuntu.com>
Uncompressed Size: 21.4M
Depends: linux-image-2.6.17-10-386, linux-restricted-modules-common (>= 2.6.17), module-init-tools, nvidia-kernel-common
Suggests: nvidia-glx | nvidia-glx-legacy, avm-fritz-firmware-2.6.17-10
Provides: nvidia-kernel-1.0.7184, nvidia-kernel-1.0.8774
Description: Non-free Linux 2.6.17 modules on 386
 This package provides restricted modules for Linux version 2.6.17 on 386. Currently the following modules are included:
 * madwifi (Atheros)
 * fglrx (ATI)
 * nvidia
 * fcdsl, fcdsl2, fcdslsl, fcdslslusb, fcdslusb, fcdslusb2, fcdslusba, fcpci, fcusb, fxusb (AVM ISDN)
 * ltmodem (Winmodem)

 These modules are "restricted" because they are not available under a completely Free licence.

Capt'n Midnight

Steveire wrote:

I'm using edgy, so my kernel version is different, but the right stuff should be in there in the 2.6.15 or whatever you have. I'm guessing you have an atheros card.

eh, nope.
In my first post I was moaning that all I could find on google was stuff on WiFi.
*me bangs head on wall *

OK here is how it was
ifconfig no Eth0
mii-diag no card
lspci D-Link but no card number

didn't have much time to debug so popped in a 10Mb 3C900B combo card (no expense spared ) as well. run ifconfig and eth1 and eth2 are just sitting there acting all innocent as if nothing had happened, the combo got a DHCP address too, (aren't they supposed to pick up the coax port to make to make life difficult ?) The D-Link returned an autoconfig address 169.254 a little later, but being lazy I just ifconfig eth1 down'd it.

Thanks all.