Re: [debian-users] 3Com 3c900 NIC troubles
At 987687039s since epoch (04/19/01 11:30:39 -0400 UTC), Randall Hansen wrote: I'm trying to get my 3Com 3c900B-TPO working under Debian 2.2.18pre21. Here's what I've tried, and what I know, or think I know :P I have had trouble getting Linux (of all flavors) to find my 3Com cards at times. What I find best is to download the 3Com driver disks (off of 3com's website). Boot off the disks (you'll need an MS-DOS floppy) and run the config util (3c59xcfg). From there, you can see the NIC, set its params (duplex, media, PNP, interrupt) and make sure that it's all set up correctly. I've found that after I set up the cards this way, Linux doesn't have any trouble finding the cards. Jason
Re: [debian-users] 3Com 3c900 NIC troubles
On Thu, 19 Apr 2001, Randall Hansen wrote: I'm trying to get my 3Com 3c900B-TPO working under Debian 2.2.18pre21. [snip] I suppose that all that errors with 3Com 90x cards under Debian 2.2 are because of version of the driver it uses. The source file 3c59x.c of module 3c59x was last edited in 1998. I had problems with my 3c905c card and I fixed it by compiling newer version of the driver. They can be downloaded from the net using address: http://www.uow.edu.au/~andrewm/linux/#3c59x-2.2 If you're get in any trouble with compiling the driver from sources please let me know. I'll try to help. Regards, Andrzej -- http://kokosz.horyzont.net http://www.earthdawn.pl
RE: [debian-users] 3Com 3c900 NIC troubles
I'm not sure how linuxconf works on debian (I actually hadn't used it since I switched from redhat). I'm still learning about the whole Debian subculture, but I think the Debian way is to just edit the files directly. As I've begun to do that more I feel like I understand the system a lot better anyway. That aside, the modules file you are looking for is /etc/modules. My /etc/modules looks like: # /etc/modules: kernel modules to load at boot time. # # This file should contain the names of kernel modules that are # to be loaded at boot time, one per line. Comments begin with # a #, and everything on the line after them are ignored. 3c59x Pretty simple. Of course I'm using a 3c905c, but I would think yours would work too. Hope this helps! -Mike -Original Message- From: Randall Hansen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2001 10:31 AM To: debian-user@lists.debian.org Subject: [debian-users] 3Com 3c900 NIC troubles Hello folks ~ I'm trying to get my 3Com 3c900B-TPO working under Debian 2.2.18pre21. Here's what I've tried, and what I know, or think I know :P - Debian installer didn't detect the card. - The card's not detected by Debian at boot (I found no 'eth0' in dmesg) - 'ifconfig' lists only lo (local loopback?) - 'ifconfig eth0 up' gives me eth0 not found - but 'lspci' shows the card correctly as 02:09.0 Ethernet controller 3com 3c900B-TPO - Plug 'n Pray is turned off in BIOS I tried to use linuxconf to set the 3c59x module, but that failed. It looks like it created an /etc/conf.modules file, which Debian tells me is deprecated. So no help there. Peripherally, is linuxconf a good thing to use on Debian? Frankly, I don't know any other way of doing it. Next, I downloaded 3Com's driver (3c90x-1.0.0i.tar.gz version 1.0.0i from http://support.3com.com/infodeli/tools/nic/linuxdownload.htm) and the install script says I have the wrong kernel version. So I tried to run the compile_UP script, as the readme suggests, and got PAGES of errors (further than I can scroll back up). Pointers deferencing and parsers not parsing all over the place. Two weeks ago I had a Red Hat 7 installation that detected the card right off and set it to use the 3c59x module. I don't know if it was the same version of that module that my Debian install now has. This is not a RH vs. Debian flame (I formatted the RH disk to install Debian, so you see where my preference lies), just an observation. I've done web and usenet searches, to no avail. One person's advice was to get a different NIC, which is silly. I called 3Com and they said, Debian? I dated a girl named Debbie once. Once they realized I was talking about an OS they told me it was unsupported. And now I'm pretty much stuck. I'm rather new to all this. All the documents I've read recently make the process look pretty easy, once you've got the correct module. I've tried, without success, looking for a pre-compiled module, but I'm sure I don't know the best places to look. Any advice? Much appreciated. Randall P.S. I subscribe to the list, so you can reply there. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [debian-users] 3Com 3c900 NIC troubles
Randall Hansen wrote (on 19 Apr 2001, at 8:30): Hello folks ~ I'm trying to get my 3Com 3c900B-TPO working under Debian 2.2.18pre21. Here's what I've tried, and what I know, or think I know :P The site to read about the 3com cards is Donald Becker's http://www.scyld.com/network/ I seem to recall when I was first getting to know Debian (2.0) and using 3c509 and 3c900 combo cards, the mailing lists were full of warnings about the 3c900B. Search some archives, there may yet be some answers for you out there. Tony (still wrestling with an intermittently unrecognized 3c509) -- Tony Crawford -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- +49-3341-30 99 99
Re: [debian-users] 3Com 3c900 NIC troubles
Hi,
Regarding your NIC woes:
I'm trying to get my 3Com 3c900B-TPO working under Debian 2.2.18pre21.
Here's what I've tried, and what I know, or think I know :P
- Debian installer didn't detect the card.
- The card's not detected by Debian at boot (I found no 'eth0' in dmesg)
- 'ifconfig' lists only lo (local loopback?)
- 'ifconfig eth0 up' gives me eth0 not found
- but 'lspci' shows the card correctly as 02:09.0 Ethernet controller 3com
3c900B-TPO
- Plug 'n Pray is turned off in BIOS
I tried to use linuxconf to set the 3c59x module, but that failed. It looks
like it created an /etc/conf.modules file, which Debian tells me is
deprecated. So no help there. Peripherally, is linuxconf a good thing to use
on Debian? Frankly, I don't know any other way of doing it.
Maybe I am superstitious. I took one look at linuxconf sometime ago,
and I am never going back there. A well worn linux system is just far
too subtle a beast (too many possible configuration choices) that a
hack like that could ever work. In comparison, consider the body of
careful scripts and policy in debian to get packages to configure
themselves and play together. Coming from RH myself I am pretty
amazed at the level of careful policy in Debian. And yet ... it still
doesn't always work.
but back to your question...
It seems clear that the first thing you must do is work out the module
for the card. Of course you already know tha ;-(. But maybe you need
some pointers to push modules in and out of a running kernel? After
all probing cannot not always work.
Another thing is that I observed the modules for my 3com NIC change
name between 2.2 and 2.4 --- could that also be an issue here?
A good source of info on the module to NIC mapping is the kernel
documentation. On a Debian machine I tried the following searches
(mind the fact that Debian docs are compressed)
cd /usr/share/doc
for f in ./kernel-doc-2.4.3/Documentation/networking/*.gz
do
if gunzip --stdout ${f} | grep -q -e '3c9' ; then
echo ${f}
fi
done
to get
/usr/share/doc/kernel-doc-2.4.3/Documentation/networking/vortex.txt.gz
which talks about the 3c59x.c modules supporting a bunch of 3c900 NIC
hardware. This looks like the module you had been using on RH. Maybe
you had a 2.4 kernel there, or they had backported the driver. Anyhow
looking in the 2.2 kernel documentation I instead find a match for
/usr/share/doc/kernel-doc-2.2.17/Documentation/networking/bonding.txt.gz
definitely off topic ;-).
You can also just look at the module names in
/lib/modules/2.4.3/kernel/drivers/net/
and
/lib/modules/2.2.17/net/
(substitute your own kernel version numers as applicable), and then
just try inserting modules for the running kernel with commands like
modprobe 3c59x
and removing with
modprobe -r 3c59x
You can even pass parameters. As always see modprobe(8). Maybe some
details will get logged to /var/log/messages et al. There are some
parameters discussed in
/usr/share/doc/kernel-doc-2.4.3/Documentation/networking/vortex.txt.gz
or by using modinfo(8)
Maybe it is a matter of moving to a 2.4 kernel. You could do that via
Adrian Bunk's potato packages. See:
http://www.internatif.org/bortzmeyer/debian/apt-sources/
Cheers and hope this helps a little
RE: [debian-users] 3Com 3c900 NIC troubles
If that doesn't work, you could try 'alias eth0 3c59x' -Original Message- From: Michael Marziani [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2001 12:40 PM To: 'Randall Hansen'; 'debian-user@lists.debian.org' Subject: RE: [debian-users] 3Com 3c900 NIC troubles I'm not sure how linuxconf works on debian (I actually hadn't used it since I switched from redhat). I'm still learning about the whole Debian subculture, but I think the Debian way is to just edit the files directly. As I've begun to do that more I feel like I understand the system a lot better anyway. That aside, the modules file you are looking for is /etc/modules. My /etc/modules looks like: # /etc/modules: kernel modules to load at boot time. # # This file should contain the names of kernel modules that are # to be loaded at boot time, one per line. Comments begin with # a #, and everything on the line after them are ignored. 3c59x Pretty simple. Of course I'm using a 3c905c, but I would think yours would work too. Hope this helps! -Mike -Original Message- From: Randall Hansen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2001 10:31 AM To: debian-user@lists.debian.org Subject: [debian-users] 3Com 3c900 NIC troubles Hello folks ~ I'm trying to get my 3Com 3c900B-TPO working under Debian 2.2.18pre21. Here's what I've tried, and what I know, or think I know :P - Debian installer didn't detect the card. - The card's not detected by Debian at boot (I found no 'eth0' in dmesg) - 'ifconfig' lists only lo (local loopback?) - 'ifconfig eth0 up' gives me eth0 not found - but 'lspci' shows the card correctly as 02:09.0 Ethernet controller 3com 3c900B-TPO - Plug 'n Pray is turned off in BIOS I tried to use linuxconf to set the 3c59x module, but that failed. It looks like it created an /etc/conf.modules file, which Debian tells me is deprecated. So no help there. Peripherally, is linuxconf a good thing to use on Debian? Frankly, I don't know any other way of doing it. Next, I downloaded 3Com's driver (3c90x-1.0.0i.tar.gz version 1.0.0i from http://support.3com.com/infodeli/tools/nic/linuxdownload.htm) and the install script says I have the wrong kernel version. So I tried to run the compile_UP script, as the readme suggests, and got PAGES of errors (further than I can scroll back up). Pointers deferencing and parsers not parsing all over the place. Two weeks ago I had a Red Hat 7 installation that detected the card right off and set it to use the 3c59x module. I don't know if it was the same version of that module that my Debian install now has. This is not a RH vs. Debian flame (I formatted the RH disk to install Debian, so you see where my preference lies), just an observation. I've done web and usenet searches, to no avail. One person's advice was to get a different NIC, which is silly. I called 3Com and they said, Debian? I dated a girl named Debbie once. Once they realized I was talking about an OS they told me it was unsupported. And now I'm pretty much stuck. I'm rather new to all this. All the documents I've read recently make the process look pretty easy, once you've got the correct module. I've tried, without success, looking for a pre-compiled module, but I'm sure I don't know the best places to look. Any advice? Much appreciated. Randall P.S. I subscribe to the list, so you can reply there. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [debian-users] 3Com 3c900 NIC troubles
the driver by 3com isn´t good. try the vortex driver, it works very fine here. (but i´m useing kernel 2.4.*). andreas
