eee box troubles

[maverick0815]

Hello friends,

yesterday I became a supposedly happy owner of an Asus eee Box. I read about the pxe-boot issues and tried to replicate the steps in the wiki about the unkown nic together with this one: http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/R8168
I also have two different cpu-architectures running. The Core/Hybrid is running in 64bit and the EEE Box, obviously, 32bit. I manually generated the MD with the Admin-Website. Since LMCE was a bit stubborn and insisted the EEE Box to get only the 64bit-Package, I did some research and found out, that you had to go to Mediadirector-> Advanced (for the appropriate MD)->Device Template View. This will open a pop-up, where you have to edit Entry #112 to i386 as well as #233 to LMCE_MD_u0710_i386 . For the latter you should also tick the Allowed to modify. Save and Close. This will automatically change the 64bit MD to 32bit and generate a new image.
So then I proceeded to follow the instructions to include the correct driver for the NIC. I finally succeeded with the available r8168.ko from Sethj and followed his instructions for the Asus M3A78-EM.
After that the EEE-Box finally started booting....BUT
I get the following error:
nfs: server 192.168.80.1 is not responding, still trying
This goes on for several minutes. Eventually the booting resumes. I can get through the AV-Wizard and complete the setup. As soon as the onscreen-Orbiter starts however, the whole system freezes. I can still move the mouse, but thats about it.
What are your experiences so far with the EEE-Box? Any hints for me, how to do this? Or perhaps this is still a NIC-issue? I also tried to download the Realtek drivers, but the version they are offering is already higher than the one mentioned in the wiki

[Zaerc]

Just FYI, you shouldn't go about editing device templates like that unless you're developing them and know exactly what you are doing.

[freymann]

I also have two different cpu-architectures running. The Core/Hybrid is running in 64bit and the EEE Box, obviously, 32bit. I manually generated the MD with the Admin-Website.

My core is AMD64 and my MSI Wind is i386. I had to use the web-admin and delete the AMD64 boot image for this media directory, set the architecture to i386, and I can't remember if I rebuilt the image from the web-admin or just went ahead and rebooted the MD. I definitely didn't have to go and edit templates in the manner you described.

These links got things working for me:

http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/R8168

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

http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=6247.0

I was able to rebuild the PXE boot image on the core OK, but needed to download the new compiled version for use on the i386 machine and do some of the manual commands in the diskless boot image directory to complete the boot. It's been working great.

[maverick0815]

Hello Zaerc,

I got this hint from here: http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=5494.msg32893#msg32893
Before I found this info, I just tried the simple thing, going to the MD in the Admin-Page, wrote i386 in the field for the architecture, tried rebuild the image....it just didn't work. It went always back to amd64 and booting the box with that of course didn't work either...so that was my last resort. Aside from that, this at least gave me a 32bit image for the EEE box, so that I could work on the NIC-problems

Thanks Freymann for those links, I had checked them before too. The Realtek drivers mentioned here: http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/R8168 are not available anymore. I got the r8168-8.010.00 which is a later version already. I tried to use them together with the provided instructions. It went so far as to "patch < r8168.diff" where I didn't have the diff-file. I researched in the forum for a while and read that I just needed to edit the r8169.c to reflect the changes described below the patch command in the wiki. After that I completed the remaining steps, but the box would not boot with that and gave me the kernel panic. So I downloaded the r8168.ko provided here: http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/R8168#Asus_M3A78-EM and followed his instructions, which resulted in the aforementioned problems. I even went so far as to copy and paste the commands (except for those, where I have to put the <moon #>) as to avoid mistyping.
So did you use the same drivers from the wiki, or did you have different ones?
After downloading the driver, this is what I did:

cp r8168.ko /lib/modules/2.6.22-14-generic/kernel/drivers/net/
mv /lib/modules/2.6.22-14-generic/kernel/drivers/net/r8169.ko /lib/modules/2.6.22-14-generic/kernel/drivers/net/r8169.ko.not
depmod -a
/usr/pluto/bin/Diskless_BuildDefaultImage.sh
cp /lib/modules/2.6.22-14-generic/kernel/drivers/net/r8168.ko /usr/pluto/diskless/<moon #>/lib/modules/2.6.22-14-generic/kernel/drivers/net
vi /usr/pluto/diskless/<moon #>/etc/initramfs-tools/modules
added r8168 and saved
cd /usr/pluto/diskless
chroot <moon #>
mv /lib/modules/2.6.22-14-generic/kernel/drivers/net/r8169.ko /lib/modules/2.6.22-14-generic/kernel/drivers/net/r8169.ko.not
depmod -a /lib/modules/2.6.22-14-generic/kernel/drivers/net/r8168.ko
cd /boot
update-initramfs -uv
depmod -a
exit out of the chroot

[freymann]

Thanks Freymann for those links, I had checked them before too. The Realtek drivers mentioned here: http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/R8168 are not available anymore.

Sure, but on that page is a link to download the compiled driver so you can skip over the first part related to building the .ko file. That was my problem... AMD64 core and was unable to build for i386... so follow the instructions for the core, but copy the file you can download into the media directory file structure and do the info for MD's....

cd /usr/pluto/diskless
chroot <moon #>
mv /path/to/r8169.ko /lib/modules/2.6.22-14-generic/kernel/drivers/net/r8169.ko
depmod -a /lib/modules/2.6.22-14-generic/kernel/drivers/net/r8168.ko
cd /boot
update-initramfs -uv
exit out of the chroot

Don't forget to edit the config files for the Media Director mentioned in the Unrecognized NIC wiki page too... probably before you do the above.

I know I ran in circles for a bit before all the pieces fell into place, but getting the compiled kernel module for the i386 machine made things work in the end.

[Zaerc]

Hello Zaerc,

I got this hint from here: http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=5494.msg32893#msg32893
Before I found this info, I just tried the simple thing, going to the MD in the Admin-Page, wrote i386 in the field for the architecture, tried rebuild the image....it just didn't work. It went always back to amd64 and booting the box with that of course didn't work either...so that was my last resort. Aside from that, this at least gave me a 32bit image for the EEE box, so that I could work on the NIC-problems

...

That's really nice and all, but not the proper way to do it.  Instead of mangling the device template, one should delete the old MD and add it manually specifying the wanted architecture, not change it on the fly.

[darrenmason]

maverick,

disable the photo screen saver on your eeeBox. It was freezing up mine as well and that was the culprit. There may be a fix but I havn't looked into  it.

regards
Darren

[maverick0815]

thanks Darren,
I'll try that one right now...as soon as the setup is finished :-)

[maverick0815]

I have good news...and shit news..
the good news is: turnig off the screensaver helped with the freezing.
the bad new is: In the core I have an onboard realtek8169S...which I must have killed off somehow during the installation-frenzy for the eee box. Now after a reboot of the core my internal network is gone and I'm rather clueless as to how to get it back. I went to /lib/modules/2.76.22-14-generic/kernel/drivers/net and renamed the r8169.ko.not (which I renamed before following the wiki) back to r8169.ko and rebooted, with the faint hope, that this would bring back my nic...which it didn't.
So I'd really hate the idea of reinstalling the whole stuff again...so I'm hoping that some magnificent mind would kindly help me reviving that card...

[update] its in the middle of the night over here, so maybe I should use that to start an install again. I guess I probably fubared the whole thing already...so maybe I fresh start will do. I just hope I won't get too much trouble with r8168 and r8169 drivers. So I'll just hit the hay and when I get up the core should be waiting for me. The bright side of this is maybe I'll get some routine in building a core :-) At least I can keep my /home, so I guess I won't loose too much data.
C'ya guys

[darrenmason]

maverick,

You are probably right - if it is a new install anyway it is probably easier to do a re-install to get it back to a sane state. It's been a while since I have done an install so I can't remember if you get the choice... but if you do it might be easier to go with the i386 rather than the 64bit.

The modified 8169 driver should not pose a problem as it should be identical for 8169 chipsets. The modification is just to remove its compatibility with 8168 chipsets (which the eeeBox has) so that a newer driver can be used for that. Did you actually get errors with the network interface coming up? Did you check to see if the module had loaded?

Regards
Darren

[maverick0815]

well...I'm back in the game :-)
I kept my /home and reinstalled the system. When that was finished, I installed my Hauppauge Wintv Nova HD-S2 together with VDR. After that I turned my attention to the EEE-Box.
I went to the Admin-page (nod to Zaerc) and added a MD. I checked the filestructures (/usr/pluto/diskless) and saw that nothing had been generated yet. So I went to Advanced, scrolled down to Device Data changed the architecture to i386 and entered the MAC-address for the box, clicked on Save and waited until the Core was finished. I copied the r8168.ko in the appropriate folder of the MD, renamed the r8169.ko, modified the /usr/pluto/diskless/<moon #>/etc/initramfs-tools/modules
then
depmod -a /lib/modules/2.6.22-14-generic/kernel/drivers/net/r8168.ko
cd /boot
update-initramfs -uv
exit
I downloaded the modified xorg.conf from the forum here and I turned off the flickr-screensaver for the Box. After that I successfully started my eee box and in the AV-Wizard configured it for 1080p resolution with openg+overlay.
The interesting part is, that the first boot was quite fast, despite the downloads...absolutely no problems. However, the second boot got me those nfs-errors again.
I don't know if anyone else has seen this on their EEE-Boxes.  Now booting takes very long, mostly because the Box is trying for a long time to get a response from the nfs-server.

So aside from the nfs-errors, I got everything running nicely. The only other thing is with VDR. I got live TV on the Core/hybrid with the Projector and on the EEE-Box with my TV. The VDR-OSD however seems only to be visible at the core.