Re: Intel D945GSEJT LAN and Debian not working
On Nov 11, 2009, at 11:55 AM, Alex Samad wrote:
can I suggest probably the easiest way to check is get a latest live
cd
and boot from there, they normally have the newest kernels on them
Yes !!! Problem solved. I am the proud owner of a Sid, or squeeze (?),
installation.
I'd like to take a little time to explain what I did for those who
fall into a similar situation.
I used this iso (The sid distro appears to use the 2.6.30 kernel):
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/daily-builds/daily/arch-latest/i386/iso-cd/debian-testing-i386-netinst.iso
Overall I find the linking to all of the different versions somewhat
confusing. For example there is a link to weekly builds
which points to a directory tree which does not have anything in it.
The problem is that getting the right vmlinuz and initrd.gz is
important and I can't remember where I got them, because of all
the confusing links. I'm pretty sure it was from here:
/debian/dists/sid/main/installer-i386/current/images/hd-media
I used the sysconfig method on a flash stick, which was very easy and
worked exactly as appears in the installation
instructions.
Now here's the really important part:
I HAD TO UNPLUG THE POWER TO THE MOTHERBOARD.
Unbelievably the ethernet hardware seems to have gotten stuck and
power off-on using the power button did NOT fix it. The fact
that the ethernet could stay in such a state really points to how bad
a job someone did on the design of either the
motherboard or the LAN chip hardware.
The key to this problem, which I was slow to realize, was that lspci
did NOT show the LAN pci device.
So I physically disconnected power, plugged it back in, and booted
using the prepared filesystem.
Held my breath and the ethernet was detected !
Strangely the system seems to be referring to "squeeze" instead of sid
(?).
Well, that was a pain :-(
I don't know whether one of my other install attempts would have
worked had I realized that
the power needed to be physically disconnected. I have seen this
behavior on another computer and what is highly
coincidental is that it was also the ethernet which was having a
problem on that computer.
I have had some hiccups and have noticed that several times when re-
starting the installation I have to unplug the power.
Aaaaah, quality Intel hardware. Well at least it _mostly_ worked out
of the box...
Brian
There seems to be a lack of coherent information about this stupid
chipset.
realtek has just joined ati as something I will never spend money on
again. Intel is about to join that list too.
Intel's web page for the board says that Ubuntu 8.10 works with the
"native" drivers. 8.10 is ancient, and is probably the
same vintage as Lenny, right ? So this thing should already be
working.
Any help _greatly_ appreciated (as you can tell by the time :-)
I was up late goofing around with this. Linux, still the same after
all these years :-(
Brian
--
"The United States Congress was right to renew the terrorist act --
the Patriot Act."
- George W. Bush
09/07/2006
Atlanta, GA
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