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Thread ID: 43772 2004-03-26 03:19:00 Mepis Linux. nForce onboard eth. Murray P (44) Press F1
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225228 2004-03-26 03:19:00 Asus A7N266-VM nForce 220D Mother board . Onboard sound video and nVIDIA nForce MCP Networking Adapter (eth0) .
512 DDr ram
Seagate 7200rpm 40GB
Seagate 5400 rpm 8GB (will find itself with a new file system established before too long, I hope)
Canon scanner and HP printer both usb .
Dynalink RTA210 adsl router . (switch to network with 1 other comp and sharing internet)

New(ish) to Linux .

Mepis Linux is a, Debian based, live CD version that can also be installed to HDD, defualt desktop is KDE and the kernal is 2 . 4 . 2(?) . Apparently it is just as comfortable being installed to disc while the CD's can be kept for repair and maintenance .

I thought it would be perfect as means of testing both my system and myself before plunging into, say, Xandros . I've had difficulty getting Lycros and MDK 9 to run on this machine about a year ago which, I'm sure had as much to do with the keyboard input system as it did the hardware in the box .

Mepis boots up nicely from the CD and everything appears to be detected and except the can't connect to the net or get to the router to configure .

eth0 can't be found . Mepis is supposed to have the nForce drivers but I can't tell if it has been detected at all and there was an error or it hasn't been found as the text at boot is too quick to read . I've tried running modconf from System Centre > Network Interfaces > Misc tab (load on boot is ticked) > Configure PPPOe which of course won't work without eth0 but kindly asks if I want to run modconf to set it up . There is no output or error from running modconf so I'm non the wiser where I need to go from here .

The networking and driver installation documentation seems to only contain Contents headings with no body text (I suspect it's all online) . Maybe thats because this is an un-supported downloaded version rather than the boxed set .

I guess I'm out of luck if the live CD distro does not contain the correct drivers unless I want to go ahead with an HDD install then update or compile which is most likely beyond me at the mo . So, where can I go to find drivers? Where do I go to find and view the boot logs? If I find the drivers how do I point Mepis at them on boot? I take it this will be at the console as su or root .

BTW . The Mepis forums don't seem to have any info on my exact problem except that one person installed a NIC to avoid the nForce chipset . I would have thought nVidia or the community would have sorted these ones out by now but, should I give up of my precious slots and install a card .

Other than the small issue of being confined to my own little world (which some will say is best anyway) everything looks hunky dory and I like it although, I haven't had a real good cruise around the software yet .

Some links:

OS News review ( . osnews . com/story . php?news_id=5348" target="_blank">www . osnews . com)

Mepis Home (http://www . mepis . org/)

Live CD Distro Shootout ( . net/Articles/68926/" target="_blank">lwn . net)

If anyone wants the 2 set CD's give me a buzz (must check the terms :)

Cheers Murray P 		Murray P (44)
225229 2004-03-26 04:14:00 I think the free nforce driver only turned up in the 2.6 kernel. For 2.4 you need to install the nvidia driver.

Try running "lsmod" in a terminal (as root) and see what drivers are listed. 		bmason (508)
225230 2004-03-26 05:58:00 Ok . Did lsmod in a terminal/console . What is listed is not recognisible as drivers by me but, that doesn't mean much . Here it is:

root@2[root] # lsmod

Module Size Used by Tainted: P
agpgart 38168 3 (autoclean)
nvidia 1630432 11 (autoclean)
autofs4 8820 2 (autoclean)
parport_pc 21416 1 (autoclean)
lp 6624 0 (autoclean)
parport 22472 1 (autoclean) [parport_pc lp]
af_packet 12872 0 (autoclean)
serial 44612 0 (autoclean)
loop 8984 0 (autoclean)
lvm-mod 42432 0
md 43616 0 (autoclean) (unused)
rtc 6344 0 (autoclean)
nls_iso8859-1 2812 0 (autoclean)
nls_cp437 4316 0 (autoclean)
i810_audio 22844 0
ac97_codec 11860 0 [i810_audio]
soundcore 3332 2 [i810_audio]
thermal 6212 0 (unused)
processor 8344 0 [thermal]
fan 1632 0 (unused)
button 2540 0 (unused)

and so on .

As you can see, it lists nVidia but not nForce, MCP or eth . It's got me, just a matter of getting used to what I am looking at or is this not what we want .

Cheers Murray P 		Murray P (44)
225231 2004-03-26 06:17:00 My laptop has an obscure internal ethernet card in it, so I put in a PCMCIA ethernet card and Linux finds that no problem, gets an IP address from my DHCP server and onto the internet we go... in terms of your pc, go down to DSE and hand over $16 for one of their Realtek cards, linux will find one of them fine ... thats one solution.

Re the nVidia drivers, I am sure that one of our Linux ladies ( ;\) mentioned that someone had created an RPM of the nVidia drivers so if you, say, installed Mandrake, you should be fine (no command line tools required).

Good luck 		Dolby Digital (160)
225232 2004-03-26 06:28:00 >Where do I go to find and view the boot logs?

In a terminal console, enter dmesg. If you scroll through that long list you will see your hardware being detected and modules loading.

>So, where can I go to find drivers?
Linux nForce Driver - IA32 (www.nvidia.com).

>I guess I'm out of luck if the live CD distro does not contain the correct drivers unless I want to go ahead with an HDD install then update or compile which is most likely beyond me at the mo.

You wil need to do a hard drive installation if you wish to add your own drivers.

>If I find the drivers how do I point Mepis at them on boot?
Release notes (download.nvidia.com)

I had this same problem using Live-CD's on my newish ASUS P4PE motherboard, with the onboard Broadcom LAN and onboard audio having no support. I have now installed Fedora Core 2 test 1 which comes with the 2.6.1-1.65 kernel which does include automatic support :) 		Jen C (20)
225233 2004-03-26 06:55:00 Glad I popped in to check before I head of for the cake tin to watch the Blues get their bottoms spanked ;\

I have a Realtek and an Intel or 2 lying around. I also have a pig headed streak in me that says that this should work which, wont allow that option until this time tomorrow unless I find out that the nForce is a no no. We'll have to wait and see if it breaks me ;)

So, to install the nForce drivers, I will have to build from the source tar ball's nothing there for Debian based distro's.. This should be fun, no don't snigger now, wait until I've attempted it :D or maybe a Debian package would be better?

Well I better check out thise log's before I start anything else.

Thanks & Cheers Murray P 		Murray P (44)
225234 2004-03-27 06:58:00 The logs showed nothing of nForce networking setup although they the nForce choset was acknowledged for other devices, was an interesting dig which gave a few clues as to what is what .

I decided to take the easy route and install one of the realtek cards I had lying around and bingo, here I am typing away in a Konqueror window via Linux for the first time :D .

It's a bit anti-climatic because I expected it to be a lot harder than: change card, boot up, click Konqueror and start surfing . No network settings to fiddle with, no arcane jibberish to learn, no firewall to configure (oops! must have a look & AV) . There's bound to be time to get in to deep do do but, unlike my previous misadventure in Linux, this is almost too easy, this is going to find a home on a HDD in this box . Now I can make some sense of the OS and enter into the Linux learning curve instead of pulling my hair out just to get it to run on my machine, follow the other Linux threads and compare :)

Cheers Murray P

PS . The Canes had a great time spanking Blues bottoms last night, unfortunately for the Canes the Blues returned the favour in a horrible display of mutual slapping :o . 26 all, bummer! 		Murray P (44)
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