Yeah, this is really bugging me now.

Been gifted an old laptop. Internal drive is dead but I’ve managed to get a persistent install of Mint 17 working on a USB drive. It’s a HP Pavillion dv 9000 with the [in]famous Nvidia MCP 65/Geforce 8400M chipset [probably why the SATA bay is kaput].

Anyway….

I had the ethernet working in a Mint 12 image, but now all I get is a failure to connect via wired in v17. It just disconnects, and in terminal, if I query, it just says “Obtaining IP Address..” and then after about 2 mins disconnects.

I am “missing my wireless firmware” so no wireless either, though that’s acually what I really want to get working.

The wireless is Broadcom BCM 4311 – just getting this going will be enough.

With no internet connection at all on it, I am a bit stuck.

Never encountered a problem with the wired connections before. They always seem to to work out of the box in Ubuntu and Mint before.

Help?

With no internet connection at all on it, I am a bit stuck.

Can one obtain drivers on another machine and copy via USB?

I’ll try,

http://www.broadcom.com/docs/linux_sta/README_6.30.223.248.txt

seems I need to have functions for building this driver. I am a GNU/Linux n00b.

Not my forte either TBH. Beyond apt-get I’d flounder.

lspci | grep -i net

will tell you what network interfaces you have… what is the wired interface?

sounds like the wired interface kernel module is loaded.. otherwise you wouldn’t even get as far as attempting DHCP

how have you configured that wired interface?

a snippet of the results of lspci grep etc..

00:06:0 ethernet controller : NVIDIA Corp MCP65 Ethernet (rev a3)
3:00:0 Network Controller Broadcom Corp BCM 4311 802.11a/b/g (rev 02)

Yeah, I can’t apt-get as there’s no way to get 😉

My configuring consists of plugging the thing in. Every other OS seems to run fine with it, I kinda hoped Mint would.

I want to use this as a NAS to save me booting the big machine just to serve a file.

No, I know this, but that was kinda my point. To wit, fuctifino. (-:

and what is the output of

lsmod | grep -i nfe (suspect this is the wired module)

and also

sudo cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
sudo cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-em1

I don’t know if your interface is called eth0 or em1…

ip addr would show you though

i kno you kno Cougar, baby.

Otherinfo±

At the other end of the Cat 5 is a BT Home Hub 3.

lsmod | grep -i nfe : – nothing

the other long commands – in both cases No such file or directory

OK I can’t remember where that is on a Debian/Ubuntu/Mint system

Might be in /etc/network/interfaces

try

sudo cat /etc/network/interfaces

SCRUB THAT!
Something I typed on your suggestion made the wired connection start working.

Right, I’mma try to apt-get something to drive this wireless card.

SCRUB SCRUBBING THAT.

It’s dropped it again. WTAF. Maybe because I closed the terminal window that had run the helping command?

Confused.

you need to find out how your interface is setup…

try and provide the output of

sudo cat /etc/network/interfaces

none of the commands above should of made it work… they were all for information

cat merely prints to standard out on the terminal

lsmod lists loaded kernel modules .. grep searches a string or file contents

dmesg might give you some clues if the ethernet hardware is borked.

And also try:

sudo mii-tool eth0

which should tell you if it’s connected. e.g.

eth0: negotiated 1000baseT-FD flow-control, link ok

It’s possible that the ethernet controller has been killed by the dreaded Nvidia overheating badness. Do you have access to a USB-ethernet dongle?

Can you run a ping to 127.0.0.1?

What happens when you do?

Its most probably the forcedeth driver that has been around since 2.6 days.

sudo modprobe forcedeth
lsmod | grep force
dmesg

Does ‘ifconfig -a’ give you anything?

Is your router set up to allow any MAC to connect?

i think its probably a driver issue not liking your hardware as normally ubuntu/mint stuff just works, i cant help with that though.

i dont use mint but the following network info may help

before you mess with anything backup /etc/network/interfaces

use ifconfig to determin your network interface, probably eth0
before changing anything use
ifdown eth0
after setting everything use
ifup eth0
then try to restart the network
/etc/init.d/networking restart
you may need to sudo

/etc/network/interfaces may look like this if its set to dhcp

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

maybe try setting it to a static ip as follows

obviously you should use your own local network details from your router.

# The primary network interface
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.1.250
netmask 255.255.255.0
broadcast 192.168.1.255
network 192.168.1.0
gateway 192.168.1.1
dns-nameservers 192.168.1.1

Hi all- sorry I went out on short notice. I’ll try all these tomorrow or Sunday and report my findings. I suspect the hardware works because it was working on Mint 12 and with Ubuntu.

Thanks again, I’ll report back.

If you’ve got an android phone,you could tether to it to install the broadcom stuff over WiFi (should be a restricted drivers tab in the mint control panel which will take care of that). Though I think I have the same chip and Ubuntu uses an open source driver for it, which seems to work just as well.

Very odd that Ethernet doesn’t work out of the box though. Try another distro just to see if the chip has cooked?

Reportin’

[nb this keyboard i’m typing on now does not support all the chars given, and i’ll leave a few out of the retype but i will enter them as written]

mii-tool eth0 : Operation failed – operation not supported

No USB Dongle 🙁

cat /network/interfaces : interfaces (5) file used by ifup(8) and ifdown (8)
auto lo
iface lo net loopback

dmsg is not installed

sudo modprobe forcedeth : nothing happens

lsmod grep force
i2c_nforce2 13221 0
forcedeth 675009 0

ipconfig is not installed

no sign of MAC limiting

rebooting into mint 12 now to test hardware………………….

dmesg not dmsg.

There are some ransom hints on the internet about disabling some PCI flags, but they might not be relevant.

This is getting messy… Mint must have a gui to configure the network interfaces.. what desktop is it? Gnome/KDE/Mate/XFCE ???

Printing your network config was to try to help see what’s going on

ipconfig is not installed

Snot ipconfig … in linux its normally ifconfig

ip addr provides similar info though

Hey, I’ve had to go out again this morning. I’ll be back and testing this afternoon.

I tied Ubuntu 12 [selected the wrong image, oops] and it’s doing the exact same thing – it tries to connect for about 30 seconds and then drops out with “has been disconnected”.

Stupid question, but do you have a link-light (probably green) on the devices at both ends of your ethernet cable?

oldnpastit- that’s a very sensible question:) Layer 1 and layer 2, whats happening with them, GFS?

And yes, please try and ping 127.0.0.1- make sure the stack is all up and running before you mess about with drivers. Apologies if you checked this first.

Ping: works, .073-.095 ms

LEDs – Green light on, yellow light flashes regularly

dmesg is full of complaints about the broken SATA channel

link down/frozen etc etc

If you’ve got an android phone,you could tether to it to install the broadcom stuff over WiFi

WINNAR 🙂

I thought this might be massive pain, but I gave it a shot – just plugged the thing in and it worked in about 20 seconds. Straight onto the software install system – Broadcom STA drivers installed in 5 and a reboot ….

IT WORKS 🙂 [poasting from it now over WiFi]

Thanks everyone.

Now – to find a way to turn this into a media server…..with a borked SATA link. I have USB, Firewire and “expansion port 3” – whatever the hell that exposes…

https://plex.tv/downloads

Good call.

Seeing as the machine will only boot if the bootloader is on SATA 1 or USB, I think I can now install Mint onto the secondary HDD, and the machine will boot as long as the bootloader is placed on the USB stick and that stick is in the machine.

I hope I can then remove the stick. Right now I’m running the whole OS off a stick, but I found that [presumeably] because I installed Mint on that stick after I tried [and failed] to install Ubuntu onto, and boot from, the secondary HDD bay [still working] I can select the Ubuntu install that resides on that HDD and boot into that OS. Without the stick in I just get “OS not found”.

I can then remove the stick after handover. I think these ports are USB 1 only – it’s really really rather slow, even the spinning rust is quicker! Also a machine that only boots with my USB stick in is quite fun 🙂

More weirdness as usual 🙂

The modprobe wouldn’t give you any info, it would load the kernel module to see it.

I see the module loaded (lsmod | grep force), so it should enumerate any network links it sees.

ifconfig -a

This should show you all network interfaces.

ethtool eth0

This should show you the speed, link etc. for eth0 (change to eth1, eth2 etc. for them). It *could* be that it is trying to negotiate 100Mb duplex which can be a swine; forcing it both sides for 100Mb is what we do on our servers. Gigabit is OK.

ifconfig -a

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:1b:24:6f:f1:9e
inet6 addr: fe80::21b:24ff:fe6f:f19e/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:32 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:6975 (6.9 KB)

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:65536 Metric:1
RX packets:2155 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:2155 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:221018 (221.0 KB) TX bytes:221018 (221.0 KB)

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:1a:73:78:a0:46
inet addr:192.168.1.69 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::21a:73ff:fe78:a046/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:124487 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:103845
TX packets:79747 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:168735231 (168.7 MB) TX bytes:8238469 (8.2 MB)
Interrupt:16

ethtool eth0
Settings for eth0:
Supported ports: [ MII ]
Supported link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
1000baseT/Full
Supported pause frame use: No
Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
Advertised link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
1000baseT/Full
Advertised pause frame use: No
Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
Speed: 100Mb/s
Duplex: Full
Port: MII
PHYAD: 1
Transceiver: external
Auto-negotiation: on
Cannot get wake-on-lan settings: Operation not permitted
Link detected: yes

It’s working great on WiFi now. Thanks all:)

Sam