Re: forcedeth generates Invalid MAC address message
On Sunday 11 November 2007, Douglas A. Tutty wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 11, 2007 at 04:29:54PM -0800, Keith Schweikhard wrote:
> > No luck on the MAC addresses being printed on the bottom. I've tried to
> > locate the chip on the IEEE website without luck. It looks like the MAC
> > address that is getting posted on both machines is in a reverse byte
> > order. When I call up the MAC address on the Windows side of the computer
> > the byte order is reversed. As a result, the first three bytes of my MAC
> > address are 00-1B-38. According to IEEE these MAC addresses are assigned
> > to COMPAL ELECTRONICS TECHNOLOGIC CO., LTD.
> > Judging from what I am reading, Nvidia chips had issues with reporting
> > their MAC addresses. As a result, forcedeth swaps the bytes. The board
> > in the computer claims to be Nvidia, but the chip is registered to
> > Compal. In looking up the chipset in hardware for linux
> > http://hardware4linux.info/component/15830/
> > I get pointed to a different driver for the NIC. (r8169) But the kernel
> > does not seem realize this during the boot process. As a result, it
> > calls forcedeth and forcedeth swaps the byte order. I am baffled on how
> > to override this selection. I've already tried blacklisting forcedeth in
> > /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist and adding r8169 into /etc/modules but it seems
> > to load the forcedeth module regardless of the fact that it is
> > blacklisted. I have also tried moving forcedeth.ko from the
> > kernel/drivers/net/ directory but without luck. forcedeth gets loaded as
> > a module anyway. This problem happens as soon as forcedeth tries to
> > initialize the NIC. I'm not certain what to try next. Any suggestions?
>
> Either the forcedeth module is built into the kernel or is being loaded
> by udev. If its loaded by udev, if you turn off networking, you should
> be able to rmmod the forcedeth module, then insmod the r8169 and see if
> it works.
>
> That would be the first step. Then, I guess you'd need to reconfigure
> the initrd to load the r8169 module instead of the forcedeth (i.e.
> remove the forcedeth module from the initrd altogether).
>
> Doug.
Thanks for the information. I finally got forcedeth to quit coming up by
removing it from initrd. Unfortunately, the r8169 module will not
communicate with the nic. I'm going to need to keep working at that one.
The good news is that the wireless card now works so I can at least configure
the system to run using a consistent IP. I'm going to have to keep hacking
at the NIC to see if there is a driver out there that fixes the problem as
time permits.
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