Ethernet not working, a weird one!

Ethernet not working, a weird one!

[Jayson Smith]

Hi,

     For several years, I have had a Linux system running Gentoo, without 
issue. This is an approx. 1.8GHZ desktop, and I'm not running any GUI, it's 
strictly console.
     On June 18, lightning struck our home. Among other things, it appears 
to have destroyed every device connected to our Ethernet network at the time 
of the hit. This included the 3Com 3C905C NIC in my Linux box. I found 
another such card and installed it. No joy. Even though the kernel driver is 
installed, the system refuses to recognize the card. It is listed in the 
output of lspci, though. Just in case this other card was also toast (not 
likely, since it was sitting in a drawer at the time of the lightning hit) I 
installed a Realtek Ethernet NIC and recompiled the kernel with its driver 
installed. No joy. However, the real kicker is that a System Rescue CD which 
includes Speakup can access the Internet using the 3C905 card I installed, 
and which my Linux system would not recognize. Therefore, I know the card, 
and more importantly, the motherboard are working okay. It's just something 
messed up on the software end. What could this be?
     If I end up having to rebuild from scratch, what is a currently good 
distro for console only, no GUI Linux that supports Speakup? If I were 
rebuilding anyway, I would strongly consider switching from Gentoo to an 
easier to maintain distro.
Thanks for any help.
Jayson

RE: Ethernet not working, a weird one!

[James Homuth]

You did throw the driver module into /etc/module.autoload.d/kernel-2.6,
right...? 

-----Original Message-----
From: speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca [mailto:speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca]
On Behalf Of Jayson Smith
Sent: July 25, 2009 12:47 PM
To: Speakup
Subject: Ethernet not working, a weird one!

Hi,

     For several years, I have had a Linux system running Gentoo, without
issue. This is an approx. 1.8GHZ desktop, and I'm not running any GUI, it's
strictly console.
     On June 18, lightning struck our home. Among other things, it appears
to have destroyed every device connected to our Ethernet network at the time
of the hit. This included the 3Com 3C905C NIC in my Linux box. I found
another such card and installed it. No joy. Even though the kernel driver is
installed, the system refuses to recognize the card. It is listed in the
output of lspci, though. Just in case this other card was also toast (not
likely, since it was sitting in a drawer at the time of the lightning hit) I
installed a Realtek Ethernet NIC and recompiled the kernel with its driver
installed. No joy. However, the real kicker is that a System Rescue CD which
includes Speakup can access the Internet using the 3C905 card I installed,
and which my Linux system would not recognize. Therefore, I know the card,
and more importantly, the motherboard are working okay. It's just something
messed up on the software end. What could this be?
     If I end up having to rebuild from scratch, what is a currently good
distro for console only, no GUI Linux that supports Speakup? If I were
rebuilding anyway, I would strongly consider switching from Gentoo to an
easier to maintain distro.
Thanks for any help.
Jayson

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Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: Ethernet not working, a weird one!

[Jayson Smith]

Actually, I don't have it as a module, but built into the kernel. So there 
shouldn't be a module to load, right?
Jayson

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "James Homuth" <james@the-jdh.com>
To: "'Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.'" 
<speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Saturday, July 25, 2009 12:59 PM
Subject: RE: Ethernet not working, a weird one!


> You did throw the driver module into /etc/module.autoload.d/kernel-2.6,
> right...?
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca 
> [mailto:speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca]
> On Behalf Of Jayson Smith
> Sent: July 25, 2009 12:47 PM
> To: Speakup
> Subject: Ethernet not working, a weird one!
>
> Hi,
>
>     For several years, I have had a Linux system running Gentoo, without
> issue. This is an approx. 1.8GHZ desktop, and I'm not running any GUI, 
> it's
> strictly console.
>     On June 18, lightning struck our home. Among other things, it appears
> to have destroyed every device connected to our Ethernet network at the 
> time
> of the hit. This included the 3Com 3C905C NIC in my Linux box. I found
> another such card and installed it. No joy. Even though the kernel driver 
> is
> installed, the system refuses to recognize the card. It is listed in the
> output of lspci, though. Just in case this other card was also toast (not
> likely, since it was sitting in a drawer at the time of the lightning hit) 
> I
> installed a Realtek Ethernet NIC and recompiled the kernel with its driver
> installed. No joy. However, the real kicker is that a System Rescue CD 
> which
> includes Speakup can access the Internet using the 3C905 card I installed,
> and which my Linux system would not recognize. Therefore, I know the card,
> and more importantly, the motherboard are working okay. It's just 
> something
> messed up on the software end. What could this be?
>     If I end up having to rebuild from scratch, what is a currently good
> distro for console only, no GUI Linux that supports Speakup? If I were
> rebuilding anyway, I would strongly consider switching from Gentoo to an
> easier to maintain distro.
> Thanks for any help.
> Jayson
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup 

Re: Ethernet not working, a weird one!

[Gregory Nowak]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Sat, Jul 25, 2009 at 12:47:18PM -0400, Jayson Smith wrote:
>     On June 18, lightning struck our home.

Wow, do you mean that literally? If you mean that lightning struck your
power/phone lines, then I'd strongly suggest investing in a surge
protector, one with protection for both power and phone, and hook up
your pc to it, including network hub/switch, and dsl/dial-up modems to
the phone line through the protector. If you have cable, then there
are surge protectors that also have coax jacks.

> What could this be?

If the card shows up in lspci, and you have the driver for it loaded,
it should also show up in dmesg. So, what does dmesg have to say? I'd
say you might have a udev issue somewhere, though that's just a
guess. Also, are you sure that the card isn't in fact recognized? It
could be recognized, but assigned a different interface, like eth1
instead of eth0. If that's the case, then that's a udev rule issue. To
answer your other question in another post, no, if you have the driver
built into the kernel, then there are no modules to load.

>     If I end up having to rebuild from scratch, what is a currently good  
> distro for console only, no GUI Linux that supports Speakup? If I were  
> rebuilding anyway, I would strongly consider switching from Gentoo to an  
> easier to maintain distro.

I'd recommend debian myself.

Greg


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Re: Ethernet not working, a weird one!

[Jayson Smith]

Hi,

     Yes, we got a direct lightning hit. The hit came in on our ham radio 
tower. We're not that much into ham radio any more, so there is now one less 
ham radio tower in the world. We do have surge protectors and computers are 
on UPS's, as is our router and cable modem. The cable line is hooked up to 
the UPS, where it then goes to the modem. All of that didn't help. It burned 
up the actual cable. Not cable modem, that was fine... actual cable. A few 
of our neighbors lost cable, also lost routers. One guy had his car parked 
nearby. It melted his fuse box and destroyed his GPS.
Jayson

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gregory Nowak" <greg@romuald.net.eu.org>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Saturday, July 25, 2009 4:16 PM
Subject: Re: Ethernet not working, a weird one!


> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On Sat, Jul 25, 2009 at 12:47:18PM -0400, Jayson Smith wrote:
>>     On June 18, lightning struck our home.
>
> Wow, do you mean that literally? If you mean that lightning struck your
> power/phone lines, then I'd strongly suggest investing in a surge
> protector, one with protection for both power and phone, and hook up
> your pc to it, including network hub/switch, and dsl/dial-up modems to
> the phone line through the protector. If you have cable, then there
> are surge protectors that also have coax jacks.
>
>> What could this be?
>
> If the card shows up in lspci, and you have the driver for it loaded,
> it should also show up in dmesg. So, what does dmesg have to say? I'd
> say you might have a udev issue somewhere, though that's just a
> guess. Also, are you sure that the card isn't in fact recognized? It
> could be recognized, but assigned a different interface, like eth1
> instead of eth0. If that's the case, then that's a udev rule issue. To
> answer your other question in another post, no, if you have the driver
> built into the kernel, then there are no modules to load.
>
>>     If I end up having to rebuild from scratch, what is a currently good
>> distro for console only, no GUI Linux that supports Speakup? If I were
>> rebuilding anyway, I would strongly consider switching from Gentoo to an
>> easier to maintain distro.
>
> I'd recommend debian myself.
>
> Greg
>
>
> - -- 
> web site: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org
> gpg public key: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org/pubkey.asc
> skype: gregn1
> (authorization required, add me to your contacts list first)
>
> - --
> Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager@EU.org
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)
>
> iEYEARECAAYFAkpraDIACgkQ7s9z/XlyUyBmcACgmx1zbLj6rU/fZSOQe6TyG6qZ
> wg4An1hkrkt5B911HKoKxN9JysQOHVwR
> =caB1
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup 

Re: Ethernet not working, a weird one!

[Jayson Smith]

Hi,

     You nailed it. Near the end of dmesg, I get this line:
udev: renamed network interface eth0 to eth1
That would just about do it. Question is, why's it doing it, and how do I 
stop it? I am not at all familiar with udev, so a simple explanation would 
probably be best.
Thanks,
Jayson

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gregory Nowak" <greg@romuald.net.eu.org>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Saturday, July 25, 2009 4:16 PM
Subject: Re: Ethernet not working, a weird one!


> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On Sat, Jul 25, 2009 at 12:47:18PM -0400, Jayson Smith wrote:
>>     On June 18, lightning struck our home.
>
> Wow, do you mean that literally? If you mean that lightning struck your
> power/phone lines, then I'd strongly suggest investing in a surge
> protector, one with protection for both power and phone, and hook up
> your pc to it, including network hub/switch, and dsl/dial-up modems to
> the phone line through the protector. If you have cable, then there
> are surge protectors that also have coax jacks.
>
>> What could this be?
>
> If the card shows up in lspci, and you have the driver for it loaded,
> it should also show up in dmesg. So, what does dmesg have to say? I'd
> say you might have a udev issue somewhere, though that's just a
> guess. Also, are you sure that the card isn't in fact recognized? It
> could be recognized, but assigned a different interface, like eth1
> instead of eth0. If that's the case, then that's a udev rule issue. To
> answer your other question in another post, no, if you have the driver
> built into the kernel, then there are no modules to load.
>
>>     If I end up having to rebuild from scratch, what is a currently good
>> distro for console only, no GUI Linux that supports Speakup? If I were
>> rebuilding anyway, I would strongly consider switching from Gentoo to an
>> easier to maintain distro.
>
> I'd recommend debian myself.
>
> Greg
>
>
> - -- 
> web site: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org
> gpg public key: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org/pubkey.asc
> skype: gregn1
> (authorization required, add me to your contacts list first)
>
> - --
> Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager@EU.org
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)
>
> iEYEARECAAYFAkpraDIACgkQ7s9z/XlyUyBmcACgmx1zbLj6rU/fZSOQe6TyG6qZ
> wg4An1hkrkt5B911HKoKxN9JysQOHVwR
> =caB1
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
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Re: Ethernet not working, a weird one!

[Gregory Nowak]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Sat, Jul 25, 2009 at 05:42:31PM -0400, Jayson Smith wrote:
> That would just about do it. Question is, why's it doing it, and how do I 
> stop it? I am not at all familiar with udev, so a simple explanation 
> would probably be best.
> Thanks,

I don't recall exactly why, but I do seem to recall it has something
to do with different card MAC addressesgetting different interface
names. As for how to stop it, I think that getting rid of
/etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules
, and restarting udev, or just rebooting should do it, but I do stand
to be corrected on that, and am not 100% sure that that's the best
way.

Greg


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Re: Ethernet not working, a weird one!

[Jayson Smith]

Sorry I haven't gotten back until now. You nailed it, and I fixed it. Udev 
was the problem. Thanks!
Jayson

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gregory Nowak" <greg@romuald.net.eu.org>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Saturday, July 25, 2009 6:10 PM
Subject: Re: Ethernet not working, a weird one!


> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On Sat, Jul 25, 2009 at 05:42:31PM -0400, Jayson Smith wrote:
>> That would just about do it. Question is, why's it doing it, and how do I
>> stop it? I am not at all familiar with udev, so a simple explanation
>> would probably be best.
>> Thanks,
>
> I don't recall exactly why, but I do seem to recall it has something
> to do with different card MAC addressesgetting different interface
> names. As for how to stop it, I think that getting rid of
> /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules
> , and restarting udev, or just rebooting should do it, but I do stand
> to be corrected on that, and am not 100% sure that that's the best
> way.
>
> Greg
>
>
> - -- 
> web site: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org
> gpg public key: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org/pubkey.asc
> skype: gregn1
> (authorization required, add me to your contacts list first)
>
> - --
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> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)
>
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> POwAmgKxzVJIrl7skdQvZH3fFWAo0CjN
> =p4As
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
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> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup 

Re: Ethernet not working, a weird one!

[Joseph C. Lininger]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

> I found  another such card and installed it. No joy. Even though the
> kernel driver is  installed, the system refuses to recognize the
> card. It is listed in the  output of lspci, though.

My guess is that you've had your ethernet interface assigned a different
name such as eth1 instead of eth0. That's done by MAC address, and if
you put a new card in that would happen. You can force it to receive
eth0 again by deleting the file
/etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules. Then reboot and udev will
recreate that file, this time with your new card as eth0. If you have
definitions in that file you don't want to remove, then just find eth0
or what ever your card used to be and remove that definition. If you
wanna be absolutely sure you'll get the naming to go as expected though,
I recommend just removing the file and allowing it to be regenerated by
udev.

>     If I end up having to rebuild from scratch, what is a currently good  distro
> for console only, no GUI Linux that supports Speakup? If I were  rebuilding anyway,
> I would strongly consider switching from Gentoo to an  easier to maintain distro.

I have to disagree with you about ease of maintaining a gentoo system.
You have to do a couple extra steps to get it set up, but over all the
install is actually easier than most distro installs I know about. And
once you've done it, the system is just as easy to maintain in my
opinion as a Fedora, Debian, or other system. If you're having
particular maintaining problems with it, talk to me privately and maybe
I can point you to some resources to help you out.
Joe
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Re: Ethernet not working, a weird one!

[Tony Baechler]

Hi,

Is your Gentoo using udev?  I personally prefer and recommend Debian 
because it's a lot easier.  If your Gentoo is very old, udev isn't the 
problem, but I would check that first.  I posted very detailed 
instructions on how to solve the problem with udev.  It's in the Speakup 
archives, but basically it likes moving the eth0 to eth1.  You have to 
delete the rules that make it do that and you should be fine.  Failing 
that, I would buy an Intel E1000 card.  It's about $35 but gives very 
much better performance and is plug and play so it's easier to set up.  
I used the exact same 3Com card in a server for years and all my 
headaches went away with the Intel card.  If you can confirm that udev 
is definitely not the problem, I don't know.  You shouldn't need to 
recompile the kernel just to use a different driver though.  I would 
definitely look at Debian or grml, especially since you should still 
have hardware speech.

Re: Ethernet not working, a weird one!

[Gregory Nowak]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Sun, Jul 26, 2009 at 05:07:40AM -0700, Tony Baechler wrote:
> Failing  
> that, I would buy an Intel E1000 card.  It's about $35 but gives very  
> much better performance and is plug and play so it's easier to set up.   
> I used the exact same 3Com card in a server for years and all my  
> headaches went away with the Intel card.

I don't know what headaches you were having, but I've been using a
3c905c card in my server for 7 years now with no problems. In fact, I
happen to have 2 of those cards here, both in use, and if I were the
kind of person who swore by things, I'd probably swear by that
make/model of NIC.

Greg


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