EEE Box Hanging On Boot

[BryanD]

Hi, been playing around with lmce for a while now and think its a great system.  I got my hands on an eee box and thought i would give it a try...however it hangs on bootup.  Seems to be a problem with the inbuilt memory card reader.  Below is a link to screenshot of the output....once it hits this point it just stops, keyboard input still works etc but the boot process wont proceed any further.



[img=http://img223.imageshack.us/img223/3756/dscf1744ti4.th.jpg]

If anyone has any ideas on what the issue might be i would be very keen to hear them
The eee box is a great piece of work and it would be great to get them working as an MD!

Bryan

[rodercot]

Bryan,
 
 I think your problem is with the NIC not with the card reader. The card reader is just a USB device or should be, which will be listed in lsusb that is how all mine are setup.

 If you look up your list there you will see eth0 link down. I am not sure if this is because you are not far enough along in the boot process or you do not have a cable connected. You may have to install the driver at boot for that nic card. I am not 100% sure how to do that. but once you generate you image on the core you should be able to get into the diskless directory and install the module for that nic. Check realtek site to see if they have a driver for it yet.

 Regards,

 Dave

[totallymaxed]

Bryan,
 
 I think your problem is with the NIC not with the card reader. The card reader is just a USB device or should be, which will be listed in lsusb that is how all mine are setup.

 If you look up your list there you will see eth0 link down. I am not sure if this is because you are not far enough along in the boot process or you do not have a cable connected. You may have to install the driver at boot for that nic card. I am not 100% sure how to do that. but once you generate you image on the core you should be able to get into the diskless directory and install the module for that nic. Check realtek site to see if they have a driver for it yet.

 Regards,

 Dave

The problem is that the initramfs image does not contain the driver for the ASUS's RTL8168B NIC chip. The basic principle is described on the Wiki here; http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Unrecognized_NIC

All the best

Andrew

[totallymaxed]

Hi, been playing around with lmce for a while now and think its a great system.  I got my hands on an eee box and thought i would give it a try...however it hangs on bootup.  Seems to be a problem with the inbuilt memory card reader.  Below is a link to screenshot of the output....once it hits this point it just stops, keyboard input still works etc but the boot process wont proceed any further.



[img=http://img223.imageshack.us/img223/3756/dscf1744ti4.th.jpg]

If anyone has any ideas on what the issue might be i would be very keen to hear them
The eee box is a great piece of work and it would be great to get them working as an MD!

Bryan

Hi Bryan,

We've added a new page to the Wiki here http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/R8168 that explains what you need to do to fix the PXE boot problem on the ASUS Eee Box.

All the best

Andrew

[BryanD]

Hi Andrew, thanks for the link and that very helpful advice.  It will become very useful to a lot of new eee box owners!

However i seem to have messed up my core boot image for new MDs and cant get the eee box to boot now at all!
I followed the advice given in your first reply about adding an unrecognised NIC, however stupidly i didnt read the full page before acting on the instructions ( i.e. i didnt notice the caveat at the end of the page )  My core is an AMD64 and as i changed the initial boot image the eee box now gives the error

"Your CPU does not support long mode.  Please use a 32bit distribution"

I presume i have changed the boot image to 64bit mode....and yes i know i should have read the page in full but i was too keen to get this eee box working...my bad.

Anyone any ideas how to restore it to the original ? Without having to reinstall my whole core...

Bryan

[Zaerc]

...

Hi Bryan,

We've added a new page to the Wiki here http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/R8168 that explains what you need to do to fix the PXE boot problem on the ASUS Eee Box.

All the best

Andrew

Thanks, I hope you don't mind but I've moved the page to a better fitting name (left redirect in place) and categorized it.

[totallymaxed]

...

Hi Bryan,

We've added a new page to the Wiki here http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/R8168 that explains what you need to do to fix the PXE boot problem on the ASUS Eee Box.

All the best

Andrew

Thanks, I hope you don't mind but I've moved the page to a better fitting name (left redirect in place) and categorized it.

Thanks Zaerc ;-)

Andrew

[BryanD]

Hi, i have finally managed to get some clear time and thought i would try to get this eee box that i have had for a while now working as a MD.  I followed Andrews  wiki page at

http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/R8168  ( ( thanks to Andrew for the clear guide! )

and then

http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Unrecognized_NIC

At the end of this the eee box manages to perform the initial boot and performs Running diskless_setup.sh etc and creates the new md image etc.  This all goes great but then when the md reboots i get a kernel panic.

[ 32.105997 ] NET: Registered protocol family 17
ipconfig: eth0: SIOCGIFINDEX: No such device
ipconfig: no devices to configure
/init: .: 1: Cant open /tmp/net-eth0.conf
{ 32.128700] Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!


Given that the initial boot runs ok, i figured i must have done something wrong when following the Unrecognized_NIC instructions for the MD part as described at the bottom of that page....however i have now redone that process at least 10 times and get the same result.

I have followed the instructions to the button....well at least that i can see...

Anyone got any  ideas ?

Thank you

Bryan

[niz23]

BryanD.

Hi, i have finally managed to get some clear time and thought i would try to get this eee box that i have had for a while now working as a MD.  I followed Andrews  wiki page at

http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/R8168  ( ( thanks to Andrew for the clear guide! )

and then

http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Unrecognized_NIC

At the end of this the eee box manages to perform the initial boot and performs Running diskless_setup.sh etc and creates the new md image etc.  This all goes great but then when the md reboots i get a kernel panic.

[ 32.105997 ] NET: Registered protocol family 17
ipconfig: eth0: SIOCGIFINDEX: No such device
ipconfig: no devices to configure
/init: .: 1: Cant open /tmp/net-eth0.conf
{ 32.128700] Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!


Given that the initial boot runs ok, i figured i must have done something wrong when following the Unrecognized_NIC instructions for the MD part as described at the bottom of that page....however i have now redone that process at least 10 times and get the same result.

I have followed the instructions to the button....well at least that i can see...

Anyone got any  ideas ?

Thank you

Bryan

I can provide you with initrams that work together with some short instructions.
Haven´t had time to verify them before enter them into our wiki.

Please send me PM and I send you a link where you can download the stuff you need for i386.
If you run your core on AMD64, then I don´t have any precompiled stuff for you.

/niz23

[colinjones]

niz - don't suppose you could cast your eye over this thread? http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=6247.0

Andrew is trying to help out, too. But another set of eyes would be great! Similar problem - eth0 goes down after the BIOS PXE NIC driver hands over to LMCE, thus the install just stops before it really even started (no disless image, doesn't get that far).

The NIC is 8111C which Andrew believes requires the 8169 driver, however when I went through the process of plugging that into the initramfs image, the install now kernel panics in the same way as this thread.... perhaps you could post over there? Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

[Bryandd]

Hi niz, pm sent...u get it ok? thanks

[niz23]

Bryandd.

Hi niz, pm sent...u get it ok? thanks

Got it.
Going to send you the files as soon as possible.

/niz23

[bulek]

Bryandd.

Hi niz, pm sent...u get it ok? thanks

Got it.
Going to send you the files as soon as possible.

/niz23

Hi,

I've just purchased EEE box to try lmce 710. Is anyone yet willing to provide binary files to fix that network driver problem for eee box ?

Thanks in advance,

regards,

Bulek.
 

[seth]

 
Hey, try this out, it is the driver I made regarding this wiki entry.
http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Realtek_8168#Asus_M3A78-EM

I am adding the file today. But to save a trip:
http://dataless.jeromenet.org/r8168.ko

Hope that helps.

Regards,

Seth

[alx9r]

On the wiki page here:
http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/R8168#Hacking_the_r8169_module

In the section "Hacking the r8169 module" the last command is

Code:

modprobe r8168

shouldn't it be

Code:

modprobe r8169

since it is the r8169 module that we are changing in that section?

Alex