[tictoc5150]

hey guys...I posted this sometime ago at the old TTV linux board but didn't get much of a response...see if you can help me out here.
following someone's how-to, I did a firmware patch for a netgear 511G and added my config to the bottom of /etc/rc.d/rc5.d/599local...all went well...but.....when booting up it gets to bringing up eth1 and hangs for about a minute then says failed, but as soon as that happens the lights on my card come on and have internet once in kde.
the top of the 599local file says:
# This script will be executed *after* all the other init scripts.
# You can put your own initialization stuff in here if you don't
# want to do the full Sys V style init stuff.
am I to assume that I can get it to initialize during boot by adding my config to a different file?
it's not a huge problem since it does work but would like to see a bunch of "OKs" and boot up quicker.
any ideas?

[jcl]

tictoc5150, on Oct 22 2004, 07:11 AM, said:

following someone's how-to, I did a firmware patch for a netgear 511G and added my config to the bottom of /etc/rc.d/rc5.d/599local...all went well...but.....when booting up it gets to bringing up eth1 and hangs for about a minute then says failed, but as soon as that happens the lights on my card come on and have internet once in kde.

Odd. It sounds like the eth1 configuration is fine but something else is hanging. Could there be something else in 599local that's broken? Have you checked dmesg?

Quote

am I to assume that I can get it to initialize during boot by adding my config to a different file?

It should work where it is. I think.

[tictoc5150]

hey jcl, thanks for responding
not sure exactly what I'm looking at with dmesg...turned me into forrest gump with that much text in a terminal...lol
but it does show a problem....how to fix it, I have no fn clue

eth1: uploading firmware...
prism54: request_firmware() failed for 'isl3890'
eth1: could not upload firmware ('isl3890')
eth1: islpci_open()
eth1: resetting device...
eth1: uploading firmware...
prism54: request_firmware() failed for 'isl3890'
eth1: could not upload firmware ('isl3890')
eth1: islpci_open()
eth1: resetting device...
eth1: uploading firmware...
prism54: request_firmware() failed for 'isl3890'
eth1: could not upload firmware ('isl3890')
eth1: islpci_open()
eth1: resetting device...
eth1: uploading firmware...
prism54: request_firmware() failed for 'isl3890'
eth1: could not upload firmware ('isl3890')
eth1: islpci_open()
eth1: resetting device...
eth1: uploading firmware...
eth1: firmware uploaded done, now triggering reset...

at which point it moves on and boots up.
any guesses from that what the problem might be?
again, thanks for your time.

[jcl]

tictoc5150, on Oct 23 2004, 07:36 AM, said:

any guesses from that what the problem might be?

Hardware issue? Just a sec....

Ah, it's in the README.

Quote

This driver needs to upload the firmware to the NIC's ram on initialization
it does so by requesting the firmware from the hotplug subsystem by asking
for "isl3890" or "isl3877" depending on the hardware detected. We don't
actually know of any card using isl3877 so if you do let us know

Make sure the hotplug system has been setup properly, otherwise you
might get errors in the kernel log stating that request_firmware() has failed

• does "cat /proc/sys/kernel/hotplug" show something like "/sbin/hotplug"?
   
  
  
• is /sbin/hotplug present?
   
  
  
• is the "firmware" agent is present (call /sbin/hotplug without
      any argument to show a list of available agents)
   
  
  
• have you copied the firmware file into the folder expected by
      firmware.agent? (usually "/usr/lib/hotplug/firmware/")
   
  
  
• for 2.6.x you need to mount sysfs!

Hotplug's a bit touchy. If you have it installed and configured you might want to check it over to make sure it's working. If you don't have it installed and configured, well, there's your problem

This post has been edited by jcl: 23 October 2004 - 11:05 PM

[tictoc5150]

hey jcl, I really appreciate you takin the time to help out a numbskull...lol

as for what you posted:
1) "does "cat /proc/sys/kernel/hotplug" show something like "/sbin/hotplug"?"

yes

2) "is the "firmware" agent is present (call /sbin/hotplug without
any argument to show a list of available agents)"

I think so...

[tictoc5150@localhost tictoc5150]$ /sbin/hotplug
Usage: /etc/hotplug.d/default/default.hotplug AgentName [AgentArguments]
AgentName values on this system: dasd firmware ieee1394 input net pci scsi tape usb

3) "have you copied the firmware file into the folder expected by
firmware.agent? (usually "/usr/lib/hotplug/firmware/")"

yes

4)" for 2.6.x you need to mount sysfs!"

this I have no clue how to do.

"Hotplug's a bit touchy. If you have it installed and configured you might want to check it over to make sure it's working. If you don't have it installed and configured, well, there's your problem"

pretty sure it's installed (configured, I don't know about)...checking it to make sure it's working, another I don't know.

If you have the patience to help out a noob like me, I'll be glad to learn but at this point I think I consider myself lucky to be posting this from KDE.
btw, your how-to thread sounds like a great idea...I'm never sure how to get the info someone needs to help me out.
thanks again.

[jcl]

tictoc5150, on Oct 24 2004, 06:50 AM, said:

4)" for 2.6.x you need to mount sysfs!"

this I have no clue how to do.

Check if /sys/ exists and contains some files. If so, you're in good shape. If not, create the directory and add

none                    /sys            sysfs           defaults        0 0

to /etc/fstab.

Quote

pretty sure it's installed (configured, I don't know about)...checking it to make sure it's working, another I don't know.

Actually, neither do I; I was counting on it not being installed As far as I know, if you're copied the firmware into the correct location, it should Just Work.

Ah, now this is interesting. Reports of a problem with the prism54 firmware on Fedora. The firmware load times out at boot, but works afterward. This workaround looks like it's worth trying. If the details don't apply to your system (if you don't have rc.local or it doesn't do whatever it is that it's doing in that post or you don't feel like following the link), try adding

echo 20 > /sys/class/firmware/timeout

somewhere. I suppose 599local, right above whatever you added for the driver, would be the place to start, but you have to make sure that line is run before the system tries to touch the card.

It looks like the long-term fix is to upgrade udev, but I don't know how to do that on systems other than Gentoo. However you normally upgrade things, I suppose. And if you don't have udev installed already... *whimper*

This post has been edited by jcl: 24 October 2004 - 11:41 AM

[tictoc5150]

so, I've tried everything you've suggested and still no dice.....It's been something I can live with for quite a while now and have no problem putting up with it....I totally appreciate your assist jcl... learned a bit from this thread and glad to have someone with your knowledge around the boards...I either need to bork my system more often or we need more linux posters here...by reading replies by you, uberpenguin, Hitest, TheLetterK, iccaros, and maybe a couple others that slip my mind, I almost feel like I learn something.

[jcl]

tictoc5150, on Oct 25 2004, 04:40 AM, said:

so, I've tried everything you've suggested and still no dice.....

Huh. It certainly looks like the same problem.

...

Tell you what. Given the symptoms I do think that race condition described in the links I posted is the problem. Unfortunately I don't know how to work around the problem because I don't know have access to any non-BSD-like init systems with which to experiment.

Soooo... here's what I'm going to do. I just installed qemu (x86 emulator, like bochs but much faster). When I have some time, I'll grab the install disks for a few distros and build a set of disk images. If all goes well, when someone posts here with a problem I should be able to fire up whatever distro they're using and orient myself. You can be my guinea pig

I've been meaning to do this for a while. The only thing holding me back was a lack of disk space and patience. fdisk and qemu should solve those problems.

Oh, could someone give me a rough idea of how much space is required for modern distros? Assume a minimal install with X but no desktop environment, no space for users, and no swap partition.

[hitest]

Hi jcl,

Here's some specs for installation on Fedora,

*

Custom Installation (Minimal): 620MB
*

Server: 1.1GB
*

Personal Desktop: 2.3GB
*

Workstation: 3.0GB
*

Custom Installation (Everything): 6.9GB

[jcl]

hitest, on Oct 25 2004, 07:59 PM, said:

Custom Installation (Minimal): 620MB

Perfect. I was hoping I could get by with less than a GiB per system.

Thanks.

[hitest]

jcl, on Oct 25 2004, 08:39 PM, said:

hitest, on Oct 25 2004, 07:59 PM, said:

Custom Installation (Minimal): 620MB

Perfect. I was hoping I could get by with less than a GiB per system.

Thanks.

No problem. You're welcome, man

[tictoc5150]

jcl, just got a kick outta reading a review of mandrake10.1...looks like a solution to my wireless problem.
from linuxforums.org:
"It correctly detected and auto configured 2D drivers for my ATI Mobility card and it was able to detect and configure my NetGear WG511 wifi card without even having to download the firmware."
gonna have a tough time fighting the urge to install it til official gets released

[jcl]

tictoc5150, on Oct 26 2004, 06:57 AM, said:

jcl, just got a kick outta reading a review of mandrake10.1...looks like a solution to my wireless problem.
from linuxforums.org:
"It correctly detected and auto configured 2D drivers for my ATI Mobility card and it was able to detect and configure my NetGear WG511 wifi card without even having to download the firmware."
gonna have a tough time fighting the urge to install it til official gets released

Neat. Mandrake's on my list for disk images. The only problem is that all the download sites I've found are FTP sites, and my FTP access is flaky.

Right now I'm busy swearing at Red Hat for making Fedora so ginormous. 2.2GiB for the install ISOs?! How many distros do they have in there?

[hitest]

jcl, on Oct 26 2004, 07:14 AM, said:

tictoc5150, on Oct 26 2004, 06:57 AM, said:

jcl, just got a kick outta reading a review of mandrake10.1...looks like a solution to my wireless problem.
from linuxforums.org:
"It correctly detected and auto configured 2D drivers for my ATI Mobility card and it was able to detect and configure my NetGear WG511 wifi card without even having to download the firmware."
gonna have a tough time fighting the urge to install it til official gets released

Neat. Mandrake's on my list for disk images. The only problem is that all the download sites I've found are FTP sites, and my FTP access is flaky.

Right now I'm busy swearing at Red Hat for making Fedora so ginormous. 2.2GiB for the install ISOs?! How many distros do they have in there?

Hi jcl,

I've had pretty good luck downloading from the mirrors at mandrake.com, the university ftp site in germany was fast and stable when I downloaded 10.0.

[jcl]

hitest, on Oct 26 2004, 12:30 PM, said:

I've had pretty good luck downloading from the mirrors at mandrake.com, the university ftp site in germany was fast and stable when I downloaded 10.0.

The problem's on my end. My ISP routes everything through an opaque proxy server. Anything that tries to connect that what appears to be my IP address hits the proxy instead, and anything that tries to connect to my actual IP address is apparently dropped. As a result, neither active FTP nor BitTorrent work.

As for passive FTP, it's hit-or-miss for reasons I don't understand. It worked on the Fedora mirror I'm using, but not on any of the Mandrake mirrors I've tried.

That leaves me with HTTP for reliable transfers. Normally I prefer HTTP anyway, since it supports transparent compression and by many accounts is now faster than FTP. The compression would have been especially nice last night, since Fedora inexplicable distributes raw ISO images. It's apparently increadibly difficult to bzip them first and save people some bandwidth

Update

Good news: found a reasonably fast HTTP mirror of Mandrake. Bad news: Fedora blows garbage all over the screen when I boot it in qemu. More bad news: NetBSD blows up when I boot it in qemu. Ah well, if this doesn't work there's always bochs.

This post has been edited by jcl: 27 October 2004 - 07:55 AM