HP/Compaq NX5000 laptop Broadcom network card problem
Bret Busby
Hello.
I have an HP/Compaq NX5000 laptop, that I dual boot into Windows XP Pro and
Debian 4.0.
The network access is okay with Windows XP, but works only intermittently with
Debian.
I am wondering whether something is wrong with the network card driver in
Debian 4.0.
I do not know how to find what is the network card driver (the name of the
driver software) that is being used by Debian 4.0.
The PCI listing in the KDE Info Center, shows the Ethernet card as
"Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX (rev 02) "
and with
"Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 64, IRQ 209".
In the Interrupts table in the KDE Info Center, the line shows
"209 47745 IO-APIC-level eth1"
The Network Interfaces table in the KDE Info Center, shows three lines
of text; one for each of eth0, eth1, and lo.
Please advise how I can resolve the problem between Debian 4.0 and the network
card, as, that the network card seems to work without any problems with Windows
XP, appears to show that the network card is not faulty.
After some searching on the Internet, I found a web page at
http://downgra.de/x20/ , which showed that that author apparently got the NIC
operational, by using the manufacturer's driver.
So, after a bit if searching, I found a web page apparently for the NIC driver,
at http://www.broadcom.com/support/ethernet_nic/4401.php , from which I
downloaded the Linux(i386) driver, which I think is a g.zip file.
And, in reading the README.TXT file, the driver is apparently included with
kernel 2.6.x, and so it is apparently already included in the installed Linux
and apparently, simply does not work very well.
Thank you in anticipation.
--
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
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Florian Kulzer
>
> Hello.
>
> I have an HP/Compaq NX5000 laptop, that I dual boot into Windows XP Pro
> and Debian 4.0.
>
> The network access is okay with Windows XP, but works only intermittently
> with Debian.
>
> I am wondering whether something is wrong with the network card driver in
> Debian 4.0.
Do you use the 2.6.18 kernel? (If you are not sure, look at the output
that you get when you run "uname -a" in a terminal.)
> I do not know how to find what is the network card driver (the name of
> the driver software) that is being used by Debian 4.0.
Open a konsole window (or any other X terminal) and paste this command
into it:
lspci -knn | perl -n0e 'split/(?<=\n)(?=[0-9])/;foreach(@_){if(/Ether/){print$_}}'
Hit ENTER and post the output here. If you have trouble with this long
command, just use the first part ("lspci -knn") and cut out the relevant
part of the output yourself. (The lspci command list all your PCI
devices; we only need the lines related to network cards.)
> The PCI listing in the KDE Info Center, shows the Ethernet card as
> "Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX (rev 02) "
> and with
> "Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 64, IRQ 209".
AFAIK, this device is handled by the b44 driver. As a first diagnostic
tool, I would run
dmesg | grep b44
right after boot. Does that turn up anything?
> In the Interrupts table in the KDE Info Center, the line shows
> "209 47745 IO-APIC-level eth1"
>
> The Network Interfaces table in the KDE Info Center, shows three lines
> of text; one for each of eth0, eth1, and lo.
Post the output of the
/sbin/ifconfig
command.
> Please advise how I can resolve the problem between Debian 4.0 and the
> network card, as, that the network card seems to work without any
> problems with Windows XP, appears to show that the network card is not
> faulty.
Maybe you just need a newer kernel.
--
Regards, | http://users.icfo.es/Florian.Kulzer
Florian |
Paolo
>
> dmesg | grep b44
>
> right after boot. Does that turn up anything?
should see something, since it works intermittently. Though I'd rather use
% dmesg | egrep 'eth|b44|ndis'
so we see what ethx you have there, if b44 module tells something, and
if ndiswrapper or something else is grabbing the interface.
Try stressing the interface while looking at syslog, see if you get any msg
when the iface locks up, by eg ping flood (other local LAN node only!):
% ping -f <other-node_eg-adsl-router>
finally, install net-tools and try mii-tool / mii-diag for a low-level
diagnotics (iirc B44 has MII).
> Maybe you just need a newer kernel.
yep, do this 1st, before banging your head against the wall any further ;)
--
paolo
Celejar
Florian Kulzer <florian.ku...@icfo.es> wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 26, 2008 at 00:03:07 +0800, Bret Busby wrote:
...
> > The PCI listing in the KDE Info Center, shows the Ethernet card as
> > "Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX (rev 02) "
> > and with
> > "Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 64, IRQ 209".
>
> AFAIK, this device is handled by the b44 driver. As a first diagnostic
> tool, I would run
>
> dmesg | grep b44
>
> right after boot. Does that turn up anything?
I have this card, and it has always worked fine out of the box for me
with b44:
Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX (rev 02)
Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device 0090
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 64, IRQ 21
Memory at d0000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: b44
Kernel modules: b44
Celejar
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Martin Weis
Bret Busby schrieb:
> I have an HP/Compaq NX5000 laptop, that I dual boot into Windows XP
> Pro and Debian 4.0.
>
> The network access is okay with Windows XP, but works only
> intermittently with Debian.
>
> "Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX (rev
> 02) "
Got exactly the same thing in my laptop and it works quite fine (with
sarge/etch/lenny/sid), the module is b44.
There is only a conflict of some modules, if I want to have wireless
also (only possible with ndiswrapper), which I did not sort out properly
yet.
They have to be loaded in the right order to work properly.
This is what I found out so far:
b43 is loaded automatically (not suitable for the wireless) instead of
ndiswrapper and prevents the wireless card from working, because there
is conflict with ssb.
To get both network cards working I did the following:
modprobe -v -r ndiswrapper
modprobe -v -r b44
modprobe -v -r b43
modprobe -v -r ssb
modprobe -v ndiswrapper
modprobe -v b44
You may be interested in the wireless WPA2 solution also:
http://datenroulette.de/blog/index.php?blog=4&cat=20
http://datenroulette.de/blog/index.php?blog=4&title=wireless_extension&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
I hope that can help you a bit,
--
Martin Weis
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