Acer Revo - kernel panic

[pigdog]

Mi mejborn,

You will see a couple of issues if using 0710 including the unrecognised NIC issue. If you use 0810 it should work straight out of the box (see totallymaxed's comments on the subject). Otherwise, at the least you will need to follow the instructions on how to update the initramfs image with the correct NIC driver, then it will work fine.

All I can do at this point is asked you to search totallymaxed's comments.

I want to get a REVO but they won't be available in Canada (from what I've heard) until the fall time frame.

I wish I could be of more assistance but I'm out of ideas.

Sorry.

[mejborn]

Hi again,

It seems that totallymaxed is only talking about the nVidia 180.51 drivers but I think it's included in the 8.10.
I don't have any NIC problems after I upgraded to the 8.10.

I guess I have to fight with it some more, sadly it does not work out of the box for me 

Best regards.

[totallymaxed]

Hi again,

It seems that totallymaxed is only talking about the nVidia 180.51 drivers but I think it's included in the 8.10.
I don't have any NIC problems after I upgraded to the 8.10.

I guess I have to fight with it some more, sadly it does not work out of the box for me 

Best regards.

Yep... you need at least 180.51 for the Ion based motherboards we've tested

Andrew

[mejborn]

And it isen't included in 8.10 yet?

If it isn't, are there any wiki page that explains how to "update" my tftp boot image for my MD? If it's how I should do it?

[tkmedia]

On an ion board i used dkms remove and apt-get remove for the old drivers.
Then I ran the Nvidiapkgrun for the new drivers.

I did have to chroot and set passwd to root to gain root access on the MD in order to perform above functions.


HTH


Tim

[tkmedia]

Also make sure you disable the wifi in bios.



Tim

[mejborn]

I'll try that later, thanks for the reply 

Best Regards

Mejborn

[mejborn]

Hi again,

I think I have misunderstood something 

Yesterday i tried to intall the new nvidia driver (180.51) on my hybrid, but that didn't work out very well, I was only able to install the 180.11. As I was going through the installation (I was having some permission problems on the hybrid according to the xserver) I thought it was strange that I should install the driver on the Hybrid because it was my MD that needed the driver?

I think I have misunderstood the concept on how the Hybrid/core works with the MD's. I would think that the boot image that my MD uses to boot over the network should have the newest nvidia driver or?

Also, as you're saying Tim, I think one of the problems is that I haven't disabled wifi in bios on the Revo (as the boot process stops with ath_pci) but I can't find anywhere in the BIOS where I can disabled wifi, I an only disabled Networking and if I do that, as expected Iam not able to network boot the MD

Hope you guys have the time to get me further 

I also tried installing the Nvidia driver from different tty's as suggested in the wiki.

Best regards

[colinjones]

yes you have misunderstood... if you need the driver on the MD then you need to install it on the MD.

Use sudo -s and your password to get to root on the hybrid, then ssh moon## where ## is the device number of the MD to remotely connect to the MD. Now install the driver. Or plug in a keyboard You could probably also install from the hybrid by chrooting without the MD even on, but that's for another day perhaps...

[mejborn]

ahh okay, but (maybe another dumb question) how do I install the driver on the MD when it is diskless? 

[mejborn]

I just tried booting the Revo from a 8.10 i386 disk to see if it would work in a non-diskless setup, but the revo won't even boot Kubuntu, it gets stuck somewhere at the beginning of the progressbar without any errors. I'am booting with the default BIOS settings.

I guess if I can't even boot kubuntu from a live cd I can't make it to netboot the Revo from the Core either. Maybe it's still the ath_pci (wireless NIC) that is the problem, but I think it is strange that Kubuntu won't even boot because of the wireless NIC?

Best regards.

[colinjones]

ahh okay, but (maybe another dumb question) how do I install the driver on the MD when it is diskless? 

The wireless shouldn't have any impact on netbooting as you cannot netboot from a wireless NIC (no way to set the AP association or encryption in current BIOSs) so it will ignore that and use the wired NIC.

You install the driver in basically the same way. The unit is "diskless" in the sense that it has no disk inside the unit.... but of course it does have a system disk otherwise it wouldn't do anything at all! Its just mounted over the network. When you install the driver, it is writing the driver and config files to that disk (that just happens to be a folder on your core)... in other words, don't think too hard about this, it isn't really that much different than a normal computer you install on. Don't bother with trying "disked" installs, they are not supported currently. Look up totallymaxed's comments on this PC, they have them working just fine.

[mejborn]

Thank you very much, now my only problem is that I can't ssh to the MD because it's not booting up completly. I can se the disk though at the core in /usr/pluto/diskless/40 or something like that, but my problem is that the MD isn't booting up.

I have searched the forum for totallymaxed comments I think, but maybe I didn't look hard enough
From what I have been able to see, totallymaxed isn't mentioning anything about something that users of the Revo should be aware of other than the Nvidia driver.

Though disked installations isen't supported currently I would think that I should be able to at least boot up my Revo with a Kubuntu 8.10 livecd, shouldn't I?

Best regards

[tkmedia]

Yes you should be able run from a livecd.... try some other live cd's as well if none work you may have some bad hardware what did it come with for o/s does that work?



Tim

[totallymaxed]

I just tried booting the Revo from a 8.10 i386 disk to see if it would work in a non-diskless setup, but the revo won't even boot Kubuntu, it gets stuck somewhere at the beginning of the progressbar without any errors. I'am booting with the default BIOS settings.

I guess if I can't even boot kubuntu from a live cd I can't make it to netboot the Revo from the Core either. Maybe it's still the ath_pci (wireless NIC) that is the problem, but I think it is strange that Kubuntu won't even boot because of the wireless NIC?

Best regards.

Your boot problems are probably caused by an incompatibility with the ATH driver used by the Wifi chipset in the Revo....if you dont plan on using Wifi then the simple solution is to delete the following files; Try removing the following drivers;

/usr/pluto/diskless/nn/lib/modules/2.6.22-14-generic/madwifi/ath_pci.ko
/usr/pluto/diskless/nn/lib/modules/2.6.22-14-generic/madwifi/ath_rate_sample.ko
/usr/pluto/diskless/nn/lib/modules/2.6.22-14-generic/madwifi/ath_rate_amrr.ko

Where 'nn' should be replaced by your Moon number in the lines above.

All the best

Andrew