puppy linux network cards

[Gazz]

gone for puppy linux, pleased with how it looks, does what i want it to...
on the desktop computer that is.

when loading it into the laptop, it dosent allow the network cards to be
used, the lappy is a HO G5000, 3 month old, it's got a broadcom something or
other wifi card,, a RTL8139 family pci fast ethernet card, and i also have a
usrobotics usb rangemax dongle, USR 5421.

i cant get any of them to work,

the 2 internal cards get listed correctly, but it can't use them it seems,
the usb dongle isnt recognised at all, and i get no lights on the thing at
all.

for the moment i want to get the wired lan working, i've read other people
with that card have problems, but not found a definate solution, some tell
them to enter a load of things manualy, but that's all too vague for me i'm
afraid,

it seems as if puppy just isnt loading something to do with all networking,
due to all the cards not working.

anyone got any ideas? btw it's puppy 3.1 i have,

i dont want to have to manually load a driver everytime i plug the usb drive
into the lappy to run linux, so something that gets the correct drivers into
the main os is needed,

puppy found the lan card on my ancient 2001 vintage laptop straight away,
but cant do the same on a modern machine.

[Will Kemp]

Post by Gazz
for the moment i want to get the wired lan working, i've read other
people with that card have problems, but not found a definate solution,
some tell them to enter a load of things manualy, but that's all too
vague for me i'm afraid,

On the puppy forum, you said you'd tried manual network configuration.
What exactly did you do, and what response did you get from the OS?

[Gazz]

Post by Will Kemp

Post by Gazz
for the moment i want to get the wired lan working, i've read other
people with that card have problems, but not found a definate solution,
some tell them to enter a load of things manualy, but that's all too
vague for me i'm afraid,

On the puppy forum, you said you'd tried manual network configuration.
What exactly did you do, and what response did you get from the OS?

Me GF is hogging the laptop, and i know better than to try and ask for it
back, even for a few minutes.

but from memory heres what happens.

when puppy is loading up, it gets to the driver loading screen, where you
get the text that goes something like...

loading mouse driver.... [OK]
loading sound driver.... [OK]
loading network card..... [Backgrounded]
loading something else... [OK]

and so on, everything loads ok except the network card which gets
backgrounded (which happens on my ancient laptop as well, yet the network
card is all ready and working when it's finished loading, just not so on the
new lappy.

once puppy is loaded up, i go to the network card set up wizzard thing from
the start button, i get a choice of 2 cards, 0 and 1, the 0 is the wifi
card, 1 is the lan card,

i select 1, (it has 2 letters before it, ed or eh or something) then i get
the screen where i can press the 'auto configure' button, i do this, get the
box saying it could take 60 seconds to get the stuff it needs,
about 50 seconds later it tells me it was unsuccessfull, and asks me to try
loading a driver.

(before pressing the auto configure button, i press the one above it, and it
says it's found a live network (which it says even with the lan cable
unplugged)

Anyhoo, i tried loading every single driver in the database, and none of em
will work.
so i went to the manual set up bit, and gave it the details of the network,
(SSID, dns etc)
and it still wont have it,

it's the same for the wifi card, so i am wondering if it's not loading the
driver for what ever bus the wifi and lan cards are on?? i know the wifi
card is on a mini pci bus because it's removable.

is that any help?? am i doing something stupid, bearing in mind i grew up
with windowz pooters, and am used to point and click solutions to everythig,
and i am more at home modifying mechanical stuff that pooter proggies.

[Will Kemp]

Post by Gazz
once puppy is loaded up, i go to the network card set up wizzard thing
from the start button, i get a choice of 2 cards, 0 and 1, the 0 is the
wifi card, 1 is the lan card,

So it actually finds the lan card then? I haven't used puppy, so i don't
know how it works, but if it gives you the choice of it, it must know
it's there.

Post by Gazz
it's the same for the wifi card, so i am wondering if it's not loading
the driver for what ever bus the wifi and lan cards are on?? i know the
wifi card is on a mini pci bus because it's removable.

If it knows the lan card is there, the driver must have been loaded -
otherwise, it wouldn't have a clue that the card was even there. Unless,
of course, the config system has a default setup and that's what it's
showing - but it doesn't seem very likely.

Do 'lsmod' and see if you can work out if the driver module's loaded. If
you can't work it out, you can post the output from lsmod here.

Also do 'ifconfig' and see if it reports anything other than "lo" (the
loopback interface). You can post the output of that here, too if you
need help interpreting it.

You shouldn't need to be root to run either of those commands, so just
pop up a terminal window and give them a go.

[C.]

Post by Will Kemp

Post by Gazz
once puppy is loaded up, i go to the network card set up wizzard thing
from the start button, i get a choice of 2 cards, 0 and 1, the 0 is the
wifi card, 1 is the lan card,

So it actually finds the lan card then? I haven't used puppy, so i don't
know how it works, but if it gives you the choice of it, it must know
it's there.

Post by Gazz
it's the same for the wifi card, so i am wondering if it's not loading
the driver for what ever bus the wifi and lan cards are on?? i know the
wifi card is on a mini pci bus because it's removable.

If it knows the lan card is there, the driver must have been loaded -
otherwise, it wouldn't have a clue that the card was even there. Unless,
of course, the config system has a default setup and that's what it's
showing - but it doesn't seem very likely.
Do 'lsmod' and see if you can work out if the driver module's loaded. If
you can't work it out, you can post the output from lsmod here.
Also do 'ifconfig' and see if it reports anything other than "lo" (the
loopback interface). You can post the output of that here, too if you
need help interpreting it.
You shouldn't need to be root to run either of those commands, so just
pop up a terminal window and give them a go.

the RTL8139 has been around a very long time - it was the first single
chip 100Mb solution and was surprisingly cheap so it has subsequently
appeared all over the place - its also been supported under Linux
forever. Unlike some cheapo Wifi cards it does not require any
firmware download. I'm really surprised you are having so much trouble
with it. I've only booted Puppy a couple of times and admittedly not
on a box with an 8139 - it did have some much more esoteric networking
hardware which Puppy found and configured without any problem.

Are you sure ACPI is running properly and assigning IRQs (check that
the BIOS is set to PlugNPlay OS=Yes, and that it powers down if you
try doing a 'shutdown -h now'). Check the output of dmesg very
carefully.

The only time I've seen 'Backgrounding' during network start up was
with a slow / missing DHCP server - maybe your hardware is working
fine but you need to config astatic IP address? Is there a DHCP server
on your LAN?

C.

[Paul Martin]

Post by C.
the RTL8139 has been around a very long time - it was the first single
chip 100Mb solution and was surprisingly cheap so it has subsequently
appeared all over the place - its also been supported under Linux
forever.

It's also a very basic bit of hardware. FreeBSD sources note:

* The RealTek 8139 PCI NIC redefines the meaning of 'low end.' This is
* probably the worst PCI ethernet controller ever made, with the possible
* exception of the FEAST chip made by SMC. The 8139 supports bus-master
* DMA, but it has a terrible interface that nullifies any performance
* gains that bus-master DMA usually offers.

[Nix]

Post by Paul Martin
* The RealTek 8139 PCI NIC redefines the meaning of 'low end.' This is
* probably the worst PCI ethernet controller ever made, with the possible
* exception of the FEAST chip made by SMC. The 8139 supports bus-master
* DMA, but it has a terrible interface that nullifies any performance
* gains that bus-master DMA usually offers.

The other RealTeks aren't necessarily much better. I have an 8029 which
can handle slow ADSL speeds (say, 800Kb/s) without much trouble... but
try pushing 10Mb/s or so over it and suddenly we're talking dropped
packets, *partial* packets... it's really very ugly. (I'd replace the
card if I could touch hardware without it burning out, but I have whatever
the computing equivalent of black thumb is.)

[Gazz]

Post by Will Kemp
So it actually finds the lan card then? I haven't used puppy, so i don't
know how it works, but if it gives you the choice of it, it must know
it's there.

yup, it does seem to find both network cards, but just wont use them,
i have a usb wifi dongle, it wont find that at all, it's listed in the
usbview USB information tool, (it's a usrobotics rangemax, but listed as a
broadcom internaly!!)

Post by Will Kemp
If it knows the lan card is there, the driver must have been loaded -
otherwise, it wouldn't have a clue that the card was even there. Unless,
of course, the config system has a default setup and that's what it's
showing - but it doesn't seem very likely.

The only driver that recognises the card is the one loaded at start up, the
8138too module.tried all the others and they dont recognise the card at all.
pressing test etc1, it tells me theres a live network present, (with the
cable unplugged it tells me that theres no network, prolly due to an
unplugged cable)

Post by Will Kemp
Do 'lsmod' and see if you can work out if the driver module's loaded. If
you can't work it out, you can post the output from lsmod here.

i gather i click the 'console' icon on the desktop to do that, rxve, ??

i typed 'lsmod' get a page of 'stuff' but how can i copy whats on the
screen, save it to the usb drive, so i can get it onto the desktop that has
the net connection? i really dont fancy copying it all out by hand.

Post by Will Kemp
Also do 'ifconfig' and see if it reports anything other than "lo" (the
loopback interface). You can post the output of that here, too if you
need help interpreting it.

done that, i get 'eth0', then a load of info about it, that's the wifi card,
then i get a'lo' and the data about it,
everythings on zero... RX packets: 0, errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0,
same for TX packets, collisions etc.

so i guess i need to know the command when in the terminal window to save
what's been displayed,

The network at home works perfectly, we have 5 windowz machines on it, and
they get all the stuff they need to get on it automaticaly, my desktop
pooter will work on it fine on puppy, my old laptop will also work on the
network fine and autonaticaly,
just the laptop i want to use on the network wont.

btw, both laptops do the 'network services [backgrounded] thing whilst
loading up puppy, just the old lappy sorts it's self out automaticaly and is
on the net when it's finished loading, the new lappy dosent want to play.

[g***@kampenwagen.co.uk]

Right, figured out how to copy the results of the lsmod, and ifconfig
outputs, (ctrl x, just like in windowz)

couldent access the saved file on the usb drive in windowz, so i'm in
puppy on the desktop... hence proving i can get on the net with puppy,
just on on the laptop, and also i dont have the news server log in
details handy, so posting from google groups.

the results of the lsmod and ifconfig:

# lsmod
Module Size Used by
snd_hda_intel 289308 0
snd_pcm 75656 1 snd_hda_intel
snd_timer 22020 1 snd_pcm
snd_hwdep 9220 1 snd_hda_intel
snd 52068 4
snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm,snd_timer,snd_hwdep
soundcore 7520 1 snd
arc4 2176 2
ecb 3584 2
blkcipher 6532 1 ecb
ieee80211_crypt_wep 5248 1
evdev 10240 1
usbnet 18184 0
battery 10116 0
usblp 14080 0
8139too 25088 0
mii 5888 2 usbnet,8139too
bcm43xx 431392 0
firmware_class 9600 1 bcm43xx
ieee80211softmac 29056 1 bcm43xx
ieee80211 33864 2 bcm43xx,ieee80211softmac
ieee80211_crypt 5632 2 ieee80211_crypt_wep,ieee80211
i2c_i801 8720 0
i2c_core 22032 1 i2c_i801
snd_page_alloc 10120 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
intel_agp 24860 1
agpgart 34128 2 intel_agp
fuse 44052 0
unionfs 83732 1
nls_iso8859_1 4224 1
nls_cp437 5888 1
usbhid 24928 0
usb_storage 83264 1
ehci_hcd 31116 0
uhci_hcd 24076 0
usbcore 127128 7
usbnet,usblp,usbhid,usb_storage,ehci_hcd,uhci_hcd
sr_mod 17188 0
ide_cd 39200 0
cdrom 36768 2 sr_mod,ide_cd
squashfs 47620 1
# ifconfig
lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:52 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:52 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:3400 (3.3 KiB) TX bytes:3400 (3.3 KiB)


Any of that make any sense??? anything blindingly obvious to whats
wrong??

i try to get an auto DHCP, it wont, i enter the details manually, it
wont connect, (got the details off my brother who set the network up,
and if i enter them in my old laptop, i can get online, so something
on this new laptop is screwing up, but what.

[Will Kemp]

Post by g***@kampenwagen.co.uk
Right, figured out how to copy the results of the lsmod, and ifconfig
outputs, (ctrl x, just like in windowz)

Yes. Or, much nicer for most things, select with the left button and
paste with the middle button - no key presses needed!

But, much easier...

lsmod > lsmod-out.txt

will "pipe" the output from lsmod to a file called "lsmod-out.txt"

Post by g***@kampenwagen.co.uk
8139too 25088 0

Ok, so (as you say) 8139too loads ok. Do the following:

rmmod 8139too
modprobe 8139too
dmesg | tail

and see what you get.

Post by g***@kampenwagen.co.uk
Any of that make any sense??? anything blindingly obvious to whats
wrong??

Yes it makes sense. No, nothing blindingly obvious. More diagnosis is
required...

Post by g***@kampenwagen.co.uk
i try to get an auto DHCP, it wont, i enter the details manually, it
wont connect, (got the details off my brother who set the network up,
and if i enter them in my old laptop, i can get online, so something on
this new laptop is screwing up, but what.

Don't worry about DHCP at this stage. Let's just try and get the NIC
working first!

[g***@kampenwagen.co.uk]

Post by Will Kemp
rmmod 8139too
modprobe 8139too
dmesg | tail
and see what you get.

Right, did as instructed, and i got:

# rmmod 8139too
# modprobe 8139too

# dmesg | tail
eth1: Tx descriptor 0 is 0008a24e. (queue head)
eth1: Tx descriptor 1 is 0008a24e.
eth1: Tx descriptor 2 is 0008a24e.
eth1: Tx descriptor 3 is 0008a24e.
eth1: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa 0x45E1
ACPI: PCI interrupt for device 0000:08:08.0 disabled
8139too Fast Ethernet driver 0.9.28
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:08:08.0[A] -> Link [LNKE] -> GSI 10 (level,
low) -> IRQ 10
eth1: RealTek RTL8139 at 0xf8a32000, 00:1b:38:2e:44:1b, IRQ 10
eth1: Identified 8139 chip type 'RTL-8100B/8139D'
#


not knowing much about linux, heck i only get by in windowz because
it's point and click, but a guess would be the ACPI: PCI interupt
being dsabled??

i keep reading about this ACPI thingy, works battery monitors, fans
etc i think, could not having the ACPI working be the reason why i
cant enable a battery display on this laptop, and on the old lappy the
fan runs full pelt all the time,

people who have had the network probs i get before, said changing the
bios to turn the lan card on from startup solved the problem, but my
pooter has a very very simple bios, only 4 screens, and about 10
things to change, and lan at start up is not one of them, despite it
having a boot from lan option,

Anyhoo, i'll let the experts tell me what to do next, as long as it
dosent involve chucking the laptop out of the window... just yet
anyway :)

[Will Kemp]

not knowing much about linux, heck i only get by in windowz because it's
point and click, but a guess would be the ACPI: PCI interupt being
dsabled??

Yeah, exactly! See how easy it is to debug this stuff when you know where
and how to look? (Well, sometimes...! ;-)

i keep reading about this ACPI thingy, works battery monitors, fans etc
i think, could not having the ACPI working be the reason why i cant
enable a battery display on this laptop, and on the old lappy the fan
runs full pelt all the time,

Um, possibly. But let's focus on one problem at a time, ey? And ACPI
obviously *is* working - as it logged that message in dmesg and told us
what's wrong.

people who have had the network probs i get before, said changing the
bios to turn the lan card on from startup solved the problem, but my
pooter has a very very simple bios, only 4 screens, and about 10 things
to change, and lan at start up is not one of them, despite it having a
boot from lan option,

I've never come across any option to turn the LAN card on or off at
startup. That doesn't make any sense at all. Unless you're talking about
disabling the LAN card in the BIOS - which is sometimes possible.

But the BIOS is where the answer lies, i think. You need to look through
all the BIOS config options and see if there's anywhere to configure
interrupts (IRQ).

Also, have a good search on google for something like the following query:

hp g5000 "PCI interrupt for device" disabled

I've had a bit of a look, but not come up with anything useful. You might
be able to find something though.

[Gazz]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Will Kemp" <***@xxxx.Swaggie.net>
Newsgroups: uk.comp.os.linux
Sent: Tuesday, January 01, 2008 8:51 PM
Subject: Re: puppy linux network cards

Post by Will Kemp
hp g5000 "PCI interrupt for device" disabled
I've had a bit of a look, but not come up with anything useful. You might
be able to find something though.

Right, so it's an irq problem,
the bios on this laptop is very very basic, i've never seen one with so few
options, but i'll have a google and see what i can come up with,

it's annoying this laptop is good, appart from it not liking to let puppy
access the cards, it wont let it work the wifi card either, even tho it lets
me search and find our open home wifi network, but it wont do the dhcp
thing, and entering the details manualy... it still wont play ball.

really annoying as my 2000 vintage laptop will load puppy up, and get on the
net straight away (that too does the 'network configuration [backgrounded]
thing)
yet this august 2007 lappy wont,
it works on windowz vista flawlessly,

annoying that it seems to find the cards, can tell theres a network there,
but wont connect, i tried fat free puppy last night, and get exactly the
same problems, also tried pclos, and that works fine, so i can get on the
net with linux, just not my chosen version, i went for puppy as it seemed
more point and click, gave up on pclos a few days ago because i couldent get
it to save to the usb stick it was loaded on, puppy does that automaticaly
1st shut down.

so i'm wondering what puppy doesnt like about this lappy,

[Darren Salt]

I demand that Gazz may or may not have written...

[snip]

Post by Gazz
Right, so it's an irq problem,

Is it? Are you referring to that ACPI output in that kernel log paste? If so,
that's normal. The first line is present because the module was being
unloaded, so was shutting down the devices which it was driving and disabling
the relevant interrupts. The second is present because the module was being
loaded and had detected a device which it can drive and it needs an
interrupt, so one has to be set up...

Anyway, assuming that the Ethernet interface is still named eth1, your local
network is on 192.168.1.0, that .1 is in use and .10 is free (if you need to
change the numbers, do so!):

# ifconfig eth1 192.168.1.10 up

Now see if you can ping another computer from the laptop, and the laptop from
another computer.

[snip]

[Will Kemp]

Post by Darren Salt
Is it? Are you referring to that ACPI output in that kernel log paste?
If so, that's normal. The first line is present because the module was
being unloaded, so was shutting down the devices which it was driving
and disabling the relevant interrupts. The second is present because the
module was being loaded and had detected a device which it can drive and
it needs an interrupt, so one has to be set up...

Derrr... Yeah, you're right. I didn't read those log entries quite
closely enough, did i?! ;-)

[Gazz]

Post by Darren Salt
Anyway, assuming that the Ethernet interface is still named eth1, your local
network is on 192.168.1.0, that .1 is in use and .10 is free (if you need to
# ifconfig eth1 192.168.1.10 up
Now see if you can ping another computer from the laptop, and the laptop from
another computer.

right, tried that, got nowhere :(

i opened console,

entered 'ifconfig eth1 192.168.0.150up'

that's the ip addy we put the lappy on when setting up manualy,

pressing enter, it sits there for a while, then comes back with nothing,
just hte xxx# thing for a new command.

anyway, i tried pinging the desktop pooter.

# ping 192.168.0.101
i get...
ping 192.168.0.101 (192.168.0.101): 56 data bytes
then it just seems to hang, i did get an error message forst 2 times i tried
it, saying it couldent find owt, but now it just hangs.


trying to ping the laptop from the desktop on windowz, i get nowt back as
well, so the damn lappy is not on the network
it can see the network.. using the test eth1 button on network wizard, it
can tell me there's a live network there, and none when i unplug the lan
cable, so i assume the card is loaded... the wifi card on eth0 can pick up
the wifi networks around here, (ours, and neighbours) but wont connect,
manually or auto dhcp. just like with the wired network.

i've tried different versions of puppy, an older distro, 2.14, 2.17, fat
free puppy, nd i get exactly the same problems.

pclos works on this lappy, finds the network instiantly, just i can't figure
out how to get pclos to save to the usb stick, plus i like puppy, just can't
use it on the pooter i want to use him on.

[Will Kemp]

Post by Gazz
# ping 192.168.0.101
i get...
ping 192.168.0.101 (192.168.0.101): 56 data bytes then it just seems to
hang, i did get an error message forst 2 times i tried it, saying it
couldent find owt, but now it just hangs.

What happens when you do 'ifconfig'? What happens when you do 'route -n'?
What happens if you do 'ping -n 192.168.0.101'?

What's that "(192.168.0.101)" after the ping command? Did you actually
type that?

[Nix]

Post by Will Kemp

Post by Gazz
# ping 192.168.0.101
i get...
ping 192.168.0.101 (192.168.0.101): 56 data bytes then it just seems to
hang, i did get an error message forst 2 times i tried it, saying it
couldent find owt, but now it just hangs.

What happens when you do 'ifconfig'? What happens when you do 'route -n'?

As an aside, the not-obsolete versions of these commnads, which display
all relevant data and don't display fields with values that make no
sense under Linux, are `ip link show' and `ip route list' (or, for
*everything* in every one of Linux's routing tables --- yes, there is
more than one --- `ip route list table all').

[Will Kemp]

Post by Nix
As an aside, the not-obsolete versions of these commnads, which display
all relevant data and don't display fields with values that make no
sense under Linux, are `ip link show' and `ip route list' (or, for
*everything* in every one of Linux's routing tables --- yes, there is
more than one --- `ip route list table all').

"Obsolete" is a bit of an exaggeration - "deprecated", maybe, but
definitely not "obsolete".

The real difference between 'ifconfig' and 'ip link show' is that it's
much easier to remember a one-word command than a 3-word command. It
tells you what you need to know, anyway.

It's always a good thing to know the various alternative ways of doing
things though - and with Linux/Unix there's almost always several
different ways.

[Johnny B Good]

Post by Will Kemp

Post by Nix
As an aside, the not-obsolete versions of these commnads, which display
all relevant data and don't display fields with values that make no
sense under Linux, are `ip link show' and `ip route list' (or, for
*everything* in every one of Linux's routing tables --- yes, there is
more than one --- `ip route list table all').

"Obsolete" is a bit of an exaggeration - "deprecated", maybe, but
definitely not "obsolete".
The real difference between 'ifconfig' and 'ip link show' is that it's
much easier to remember a one-word command than a 3-word command. It
tells you what you need to know, anyway.
It's always a good thing to know the various alternative ways of doing
things though - and with Linux/Unix there's almost always several
different ways.

Not a lot different to ms windows then (I know at least 4 different
ways to bring up "device manager" in win2k :-)

[Gazz]

Sorry for not giving the rersults of doing the things asked to do so.


Like a fool, i decided to 'quickly' try a different linux version on this
lappy, remembering that pclos worked before when i tested it off the live
CD,

i downloaded tinyme (linked from the pclos site) put it onto my new 8 gig
usb flash drive from the laptop,

Found out that it did work the network card, but i still prefered puppy's
look and feel, no problems i thought, it's on the thumb drive, just put the
puppy one in and use that,

No go, couldent find the boot record for puppy, then found out i couldent
get into vista on the laptops HD either, bloody tinyme had killed the MBR on
the hard drive, and i found out was using the HD for the save files instead
of the flash drive, and to do so had formatted the HD to an ext3 file
system.

So now i have a laptop with a screwed up HD, i asked for help on the pclos
forums, and the mods pulled my post, giving me a rude reply saying tinyme
isnt released yet, i shouldent be using it unless i'm a dev, and my posts
about tinyme are not welcome on the pclos boards, and basicaly never to
mention the screw up it caused on their boards again!!

So much for the linux community being the friendly one,

i wasnt too fussed about loosing vista, i didnt like it, i just wanted to
get the video and photo files off the HD if i could, as i have the only
photo's of a very special to us, pet rat we got whilst in germany who died
before we got back to england, and they are very sentimental,
if i could have got the photo's back, i would have let pclos have the whole
HD whilst i try to get puppy to work with the network card.

So anyway, i think the photo's are lost now, the drive is a sata type i
think, it's not got the standard ide connector, so i cant put it in my hd
caddy, and searching the drive in linux shows no photo files at all.it was
formatted as ntfs before, and is now ext3,

But from the response i got from the pclos people, they can go and get
stuffed, i was told by them that tinyme was the official one when i had got
minime before, and was told minime isnt supported no more, tinyme is the one
to use, then they tell me not to use tinyme, and tuff that it's screwed my
laptop up,

So when i get the laptop running again, i'll go back to batteling with pupy,
at leastpuppy was well behaved, and stayed on the flash drive,

[Will Kemp]

Post by Gazz
So now i have a laptop with a screwed up HD, i asked for help on the
pclos forums, and the mods pulled my post, giving me a rude reply saying
tinyme isnt released yet, i shouldent be using it unless i'm a dev, and
my posts about tinyme are not welcome on the pclos boards, and basicaly
never to mention the screw up it caused on their boards again!!

They sound like "PCLOSers"! ;-)

Post by Gazz
So much for the linux community being the friendly one,

Mostly it is! Maybe the PC Losers are the exception! I'll give that
distro a miss in future (not that there was really any chance i'd use it
anyway...)

Post by Gazz
So anyway, i think the photo's are lost now,

No they're not! So don't go formatting the hard drive or anything like
that!!! I'm busy at the moment, but i'll post again later and tell you
how to get crappy old vista to boot.

Does puppy use grub or lilo as the boot loader? If you don't know, what
exactly do you get when it first boots - the very first thing it puts on
the screen (after the bios message(s), if any)?

[Whiskers]

On 2008-01-04, Gazz <***@m.ta> wrote:

[...]

Post by Gazz
So now i have a laptop with a screwed up HD, i asked for help on the pclos
forums, and the mods pulled my post, giving me a rude reply saying tinyme
isnt released yet, i shouldent be using it unless i'm a dev, and my posts
about tinyme are not welcome on the pclos boards, and basicaly never to
mention the screw up it caused on their boards again!!
So much for the linux community being the friendly one,

[...]

When you visited <http://www.mypclinuxos.com/doku.php/tinyme:home> didn't
you see this notice?

Help

Right now TinyMe is still in testing stages. We don't yet recommend it
for the new-to-Linux user.

Help forums are set up at <http://tinyme.mypclinuxos.com/forums>

Have you joined the TinyMe web forums to see if anyone there can help you
recover the data you say has been lost from your Windows installation?

Are you sure that the whole of your hard disc has been re-formatted? How
carefully were you watching what happened and taking notes while you were
experimenting?

Why were there no backups of the files you wanted to keep?

Try to resist the temptation to continue barging ahead on guesswork and
hope until you've calmed down and done some careful investigation and
research. Things may not be quite as you think they are in the heat of the
moment - but if you try to start installing another Windows OS on that
hard disc you'll almost certainly lose anything that is still there.

[Will Kemp]

Post by Gazz
No go, couldent find the boot record for puppy, then found out i
couldent get into vista on the laptops HD either, bloody tinyme had
killed the MBR on the hard drive, and i found out was using the HD for
the save files instead of the flash drive, and to do so had formatted
the HD to an ext3 file system.

Are you sure it's re-formatted the whole hard drive? What happens if you
boot it with puppy and check the partition table using 'fdisk'?

I'm not sure how puppy accesses PATA disks, but try 'fdisk /dev/sda'

Then in fdisk, do 'p' - that will list the partitions on the disk.

Don't alter anything, just quit with 'q'.

If there's still an NTFS partition on the disk (i guess that's what vista
uses), then you may need to just restore the master boot sector to some
semblance of sanity.

If it really has reformatted the whole disk, you will need to find some
forensic software and recover the lost filesystem. I found a really good
one a year or two ago, but i can't remember what it was called. Try
googling for it.

[Gazz]

Post by Will Kemp

Post by Gazz
No go, couldent find the boot record for puppy, then found out i
couldent get into vista on the laptops HD either, bloody tinyme had
killed the MBR on the hard drive, and i found out was using the HD for
the save files instead of the flash drive, and to do so had formatted
the HD to an ext3 file system.

Are you sure it's re-formatted the whole hard drive? What happens if you
boot it with puppy and check the partition table using 'fdisk'?
I'm not sure how puppy accesses PATA disks, but try 'fdisk /dev/sda'
Then in fdisk, do 'p' - that will list the partitions on the disk.
Don't alter anything, just quit with 'q'.
If there's still an NTFS partition on the disk (i guess that's what vista
uses), then you may need to just restore the master boot sector to some
semblance of sanity.
If it really has reformatted the whole disk, you will need to find some
forensic software and recover the lost filesystem. I found a really good
one a year or two ago, but i can't remember what it was called. Try
googling for it.

it shows the HD as a ext3 file system now, a 7 odd gig ext3, a 1 gig liunux
swap, and a 100 gig ext3 partition, no ntfs partitions to be seen :(

[Will Kemp]

Post by Gazz
it shows the HD as a ext3 file system now, a 7 odd gig ext3, a 1 gig
liunux swap, and a 100 gig ext3 partition, no ntfs partitions to be seen
:(

Search google for

forensic "file system" software

or

"file system" recovery software

and see what you find. I'll have a bit of a look later too. There's loads
of it, but it can be difficult to find anything that's any use. If you
find the right software, you should be able to recover most of the data
on that disk.

[Michael Rozdoba]

Will Kemp wrote:
| On Sat, 05 Jan 2008 00:10:42 +0000, Gazz wrote:
|
|> it shows the HD as a ext3 file system now, a 7 odd gig ext3, a 1 gig
|> liunux swap, and a 100 gig ext3 partition, no ntfs partitions to be seen
|> :(
|
| Search google for
|
| forensic "file system" software
|
| or
|
| "file system" recovery software
|
| and see what you find. I'll have a bit of a look later too. There's loads
| of it, but it can be difficult to find anything that's any use. If you
| find the right software, you should be able to recover most of the data
| on that disk.

http://www.hiren.info/downloads/freeware-tools/2

includes some ntfs file recovery programs. Be warned though there's 41
pages of freeware tools & utilities there, in no particular order. I
scanned the first 16 pages & found four or five that might be of use to
Gazz - there's a couple on the linked 2nd page above.

Also, if one doesn't mind downloading & using software off Usenet or Bit
Torrent, there's also info on the above site concerning the contents of
HiRen's Boot CD which aiui contains a large collection of useful utilities.

Lastly, assuming not much has been written to the drive since it was
reformatted, if you're lucky, especially if it was kept well
defragmented &/or wasn't especially full, a crude scan of the raw drive
contents might be enough to pick out entire contiguous jpegs - that's
precisely what some of the file recovery tools will attempt to automate,
along with support for other easily recognisable file types.

Do let us know Gazz, should you manage to recover your ratty pics.

[Gazz]

Post by Michael Rozdoba
http://www.hiren.info/downloads/freeware-tools/2
includes some ntfs file recovery programs. Be warned though there's 41
pages of freeware tools & utilities there, in no particular order. I
scanned the first 16 pages & found four or five that might be of use to
Gazz - there's a couple on the linked 2nd page above.

Cheers for those links,

unfortunately none of the file recovery tools could do owt with the hard
drive,

BUT, one of the tools managed to pull 615 photo's back of the deleted memory
card in my camera, i had deleted it after uploading the photo's to the
laptop, but luckily only taken about 20 new photo's.

i got most of the photo's of Branden back (the little huskey rat who only
lived for 3 months with us)
i also got a load of photo's back from the drive through austria, which i'm
pleased at, unfortunately it couldent find any of the photo's of the
kelstien haus (eagles nest) so we'll have to go back there again to take
more photo's :)

it got a few photo's of the steam trains on the line we parked up by for a
few days, but none of the ones of them working in the dark, which is
annoying, it got a load of photo's taken 4 months back too! of the wolf
parks in france we visited,
so at least we have some memories of the euro trip we did, and most
importiantly we have the photo's of Branden back.

So now i'll put puppy back on the flash drive, and try the suggestions to
find out what's wrong with the networking stuff,

Thanks again for the help getting the photo's back.

[Will Kemp]

Post by Gazz
BUT, one of the tools managed to pull 615 photo's back of the deleted
memory card in my camera,

That's good! Which tool was it? It's always handy keeping tabs on these
things - i need them so rarely, but last time i needed one i couldn't
find one that worked.

[Gazz]

Post by Will Kemp

Post by Gazz
BUT, one of the tools managed to pull 615 photo's back of the deleted
memory card in my camera,

That's good! Which tool was it? It's always handy keeping tabs on these
things - i need them so rarely, but last time i needed one i couldn't
find one that worked.

It was'art plus digital photo recovery' that got them off the memory cards,
took a good couple of hours to get the 600 odd photo's off a 2 gig card,
it's running again now on my 1 gig card that i havent used for ages, just to
see what was on there.

[Will Kemp]

Post by Gazz
It was'art plus digital photo recovery' that got them off the memory cards,

That's incredible - it even works in Wine!!! Amazing! Now i can extract
the couple of accidentally deleted pics i've had sitting in a 2GB card
image file on my hard drive for over 6 months! And then, finally, i an
delete that image file! ;-)

Cheers!

[Nix]

Post by Will Kemp

Post by Nix
As an aside, the not-obsolete versions of these commnads, which display
all relevant data and don't display fields with values that make no
sense under Linux, are `ip link show' and `ip route list' (or, for
*everything* in every one of Linux's routing tables --- yes, there is
more than one --- `ip route list table all').

"Obsolete" is a bit of an exaggeration - "deprecated", maybe, but
definitely not "obsolete".

It's no longer maintained, as far as I know. It's in the same boat as
most cron daemons :/ new networking features get userspace support
added in ip(8) on pretty much the same day they land in the kernel.
Support *never* lands in ifconfig/route.

Post by Will Kemp
The real difference between 'ifconfig' and 'ip link show' is that it's
much easier to remember a one-word command than a 3-word command. It
tells you what you need to know, anyway.

I find ip(8) dramatically easier to use, mostly because `route' is such
a sod, with an irregular and annoying syntax which is *differently*
irregular and annoying on every Unix out there, most of which are very
different from Linux syntax-wise.

ip(8) is consistent and clear. The only thing ifconfig/route provide
which ip(8) doesn't is interface statistics, which are provided by the
ifstat(8) command (and which again does vastly more, up to and including
top-like monitoring).

Post by Will Kemp
It's always a good thing to know the various alternative ways of doing
things though - and with Linux/Unix there's almost always several
different ways.

Yes. Sometimes one way is unequivocally better than the others. That's
the case here.

[Tony Houghton]

Post by Nix
It's no longer maintained, as far as I know. It's in the same boat as
most cron daemons :/

How do you mean? Are there just one or two overwhelmingly popular cron
daemons so people don't think the others are worth maintaining?

[Nix]

Post by Tony Houghton

Post by Nix
It's no longer maintained, as far as I know. It's in the same boat as
most cron daemons :/

How do you mean? Are there just one or two overwhelmingly popular cron
daemons so people don't think the others are worth maintaining?

Most cron daemons no longer *have* a live upstream (Vixie cron, in
particular). Distros do their own thing. It's all a bit of a mess.

[Martin Gregorie]

Post by Will Kemp

not knowing much about linux, heck i only get by in windowz because it's
point and click, but a guess would be the ACPI: PCI interupt being
dsabled??

Yeah, exactly! See how easy it is to debug this stuff when you know where
and how to look? (Well, sometimes...! ;-)

i keep reading about this ACPI thingy, works battery monitors, fans etc
i think, could not having the ACPI working be the reason why i cant
enable a battery display on this laptop, and on the old lappy the fan
runs full pelt all the time,

Um, possibly. But let's focus on one problem at a time, ey? And ACPI
obviously *is* working - as it logged that message in dmesg and told us
what's wrong.

people who have had the network probs i get before, said changing the
bios to turn the lan card on from startup solved the problem, but my
pooter has a very very simple bios, only 4 screens, and about 10 things
to change, and lan at start up is not one of them, despite it having a
boot from lan option,

I've never come across any option to turn the LAN card on or off at
startup. That doesn't make any sense at all. Unless you're talking about
disabling the LAN card in the BIOS - which is sometimes possible.
But the BIOS is where the answer lies, i think. You need to look through
all the BIOS config options and see if there's anywhere to configure
interrupts (IRQ).
hp g5000 "PCI interrupt for device" disabled
I've had a bit of a look, but not come up with anything useful. You might
be able to find something though.

I had a problem which sounds a lot like yours. My system is an older IBM
NetVista (866 MHz Intel PIII, 256 MB RAM) with a PCI network card based
on an RTL-8100B/8139D network chipset.

When I had the problem I was running Kernel 2.6.22, which was
recognizing the chip and loading the 8139too driver. The 8139cp driver
doesn't work with this chip: the kernel detects this and tries 8139too
instead. I was running Fedora 6 when I ran into this problem.

Try adding

pci=routeirq

to the kernel boot parameters. If you interrupt GRUB while its counting
down before booting the kernel you can edit the kernel's boot command.
Doing this does not make a permanent change, so if it works for you
remember to edit /boot/grub/menu.1st to make the change permanent.

I can't remember exactly when this problem vanished, but it may have
been cleared by the switch to kernel 2.6.23. I no longer need to specify
"pci=routeirq". It was removed automatically, probably by the installer
when I switched to FC7.