Re: SOLVED! ... Onboard rtl8139 works in 2.2 kernel but not in 2.4 kernel, please help
Just thought I'd pass this along to hopefully save the hair of other poor
souls that buy this board ...
I've had this server on hold for a while for reasons other than the network
card, finally yesterday I started trying to get the network card going again.
Even offboard cards (tried tulip, 3com and rtl pci cards) would not work when
running the 2.4 kernel (mostly trying with 2.4.18-686 kernel).
I tried a lot of boot options since I figured it had something to do with some
of the fancy-schmancy new features being supported. pci=noacpi,
acpi=oldboot, acpi=force, acpi=off, noapic. Now I guess ACPI is different
than APIC, and both are different than APM.
noapic passed at boot time was the magic dust required. I just did some quick
reading and APIC seems to be some IRQ routing protocol used to send
interrupts to different CPUs in an SMP machine. My machine isn't SMP, it
supports hyperthreading but I only have a 2.4 P4 (not hyperthreaded).
Once I found the noapic option it became apparent that other people have
suffered from similar troubles but it was a heck of a hunt to find it. I'll
be accompanied by a big bottle of wine tonight as I settle down in from of
the hockey game.
Anyway enough rambling ... good day.
On Tuesday 11 March 2003 11:07, Fraser Campbell wrote:
> Hi,
>
> First off, is this the correct place to get answers on kernel/driver
> problems? Should I instead post to debian-boot, should I email the kernel
> maintainer, or should I submit a bug report?
>
> Now the problem ... I recently purchased a Gigabyte GA-8SIMLH motherboard.
> It has an onboard network card identified as a REALTEK RTL8100L LAN chip
> (see http://www.giga-byte.com/products/8simlh.htm). I installed woody
> using one of the mini-install CDs and that went fine with one exception.
>
> The 8139too module in kernel-2.2.20-idepci loads and drives this network
> card just fine. kernel-image-2.2.22 also works. In 2.2.22, 8139too.c
> claims to be driver version 0.9.18-2.2.
>
> The 8139too driver in woody's 2.4 kernels successfully loads and I can see
> eth0 (i.e. ifconfig eth0) but it simply isn't able to communicate on the
> network. kernel-image-2.4.18-686, kernel-image-2.4.20-686 (from proposed
> updates) and the 2.4 boot floppy kernel (2.4bf?) all show this problem.
> 8139too.c in 2.4.20 claims to be driver version 0.9.26.
>
> I get the message "NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit timed out" when using
> the 2.4 kernels and no successful network communication occurs. mii-tool
> show a successfully negotiated 100baseTX-FD connection
>
> According to Donald Becker this chip has been supported for quite a while
> (see http://www.tux.org/hypermail/linux-eepro100/2001-Oct/0002.html).
>
> An interesting side note is that the kernel from Redhat 8.0 (2.4.18-14)
> works fine. The driver in Redhat's kernel claims to be version 0.9.25 but
> they are patching it. The redhat kernel has the same options selected
> regarding the 8139too (driver as a module and support for older boards is
> checked).
>
> Redhat's 2.4.18-14 actually seems to be more a 2.4.19 kernel since they
> apply the following patch:
>
> ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4/testing/patch-2.4.19-rc1.bz2
>
> The above patch does modify the 8139too driver.
>
> Can anyone suggest a course of action? I have no problem with compiling my
> own kernels but since the redhat kernel works with the same options as
> Debian's kernel I'm not sure what a recompile might accomplish without
> patching.
>
> Thanks for any help!
> --
> Fraser Campbell <fraser@wehave.net> http://wehave.net/
> Brampton, Ontario, Canada Debian
> GNU/Linux
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