[SOLVED] Network issues on new PC, x86_64.

[elmago]

On a newly built PC (mobo Gigabyte 970a-ud3) I am trying to achieve 3 things...
1. Get wired ethernet set up on RTL8111E chipset of the mobo;
2. Get a USB DWA-160 in WPA-2, 802.11g Wi-fi set up in it; (My DWA-160 in H/W Rev B1, S/W 2.0)
3. Get a decent ATI driver for Radeon HD 6790.

I installed Win-7 first on a hard disk and that tells me all these 3 things work fine there.

Then I go and install Mageia-1 64-bit on a different hard disk and to stop grub from messing with Win-7 bootloader, I made sure to disconnect the Win-7 hard disk before installing Mageia-1. So, it starts with default VESA driver and somehow I was able to get the display to 1680x1050 res. That is enough to get me going.

The rt8169.ko.gz does not drive the RTL8111E very well ... lots of disconnects every couple of minutes. So, I find a SUSE post that says to download rt8168 from Ralink, which I did next using a different PC. That source builds and produces rt8168.ko but does not remove the old driver. Its autorun.sh does make the module dependency but I still need to issue a modprobe to load the new driver.

My Question-1: How do I get rid off the old driver (instead of removing the old driver from lib/modules.d path) and make sure that the new driver gets loaded at boot time? Note that I tried to blacklist the old driver in /etc/modprobe.d/compat-blacklist(?) but that did not help.

My Question-2: The rt2870 driver (the chipset inside DWA-160 USB) from Ralink website does not build and spews out way too many warnings for a production driver. It fails during the Make ... possibly during linking. Can Mageia recommend any repository for this driver? The kernel is spewing out messages (dmesg) trying to load the rt2870 firmware which I do not have. Can Mageia recommend where to get that? I know I have to choose between the Mageia's kernel driver or Ralink's driver but neither of these choices seems trouble-free at this moment.

The ATI driver? Well, let me handle the network first!

Thanks.

[John66]

Welcome to Mageia, elmago.

For my usb wi-fi too, a Level One WUA-603, H/W ver: 2.0, the rt2870 firmware was needed.
It's in the Mageia repos (nonfree release). You must enable it, in case you haven't done that already.
The package name is: rt2870-firmware
In my case, I had to download also the package: kernel-firmware-extra (also in Mageia nonfree release repos).
Then, my wi-fi was up and running.
Maybe, after the package(s) installation, you have to reboot (it was not needed in my case).

I have also a Gigabyte motherboard (a bit older model than yours), with Realtek 8111C chip (yours is 8111E),
and I never had problems with ethernet connection. So, yours should also work.
Maybe an extra package is needed?
Can't help you about the ATI issue. I use nvidia.

EDIT: Use another pc, or a live-cd that recognizes your ethernet ot wifi card, and you can download the above packages, if you click on the links below:
ftp://distrib-coffee.ipsl.jussieu.fr/pub/linux/Mageia/distrib/1/x86_64/media/nonfree/release/kernel-firmware-extra-20110517-1.mga1.noarch.rpm
ftp://distrib-coffee.ipsl.jussieu.fr/pub/linux/Mageia/distrib/1/x86_64/media/nonfree/release/rt2870-firmware-22-1.mga1.noarch.rpm

[sglafata]

Regarding the ATI driver, you may want to look at the Errata doco at the bottom: http://www.mageia.org/wiki/doku.php?id=mageia1:errata

And then the Bug report: https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=87

According to the ATI website, you should be using this driver: http://www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/ati-d ... x86_64.run

Not sure what version driver Mageia has in their repositories, but if you want a decent driver, I would use the one from ATI which they would support.

[elmago]

Thanks to John66, his advice is right on the money. I am able to connect using the DWA-160 USB and also the Enet (r8168) at the same time. I need the DWA-160 connection more than the wired one. So, I am happy. But the r8169.ko.gz really has problem driving RTL8111E even though there are several enet chips in the same 8111 series.

For the Radeon 6790 and the post from sglafata...
I have already downloaded the ATI proprietary driver (73 MB) but have been looking for a non-proprietary solution if I can. I use Gnome and I like the fact the Mageia has not jumped into the latest Gnome bandwagon. That latest Gnome was one of the main reasons I chose Mageia over Fedora. To me that Gnome is a waste of time and better suited for the teens looking for Facebook email, iPOD-touch and all associated distractions. I hope Mageia stays with current Gnome only. (Sorry... just couldn't help venting my displeasure for such a transition of Gnome).

Now, I found out there is something called xf86-video-ati 6.14.4 which is open source and per Wikipedia, it can drive even 69xx series Radeon. My knowledge of display drivers is limited and want to know if this is a viable solution for Mageia-1. I am not into games (the Win 7 boot is there for the games for my kids). I would rather like to do video editing using Cinelerra and stuff like that.

My physical connection is a single Samsung 22" TV/Monitor with HDMI and for the sound I use an external speaker system. So, I could really fall back onto the DVI-to-VGA adapter if required (at the cost of losing HD).

Thanks.

[John66]

I'm glad you solved your internet connection problems.
If I understood correctly, your wired connection (with the RTL8111E chipset) is working too?

Although I'm not an ATI graphics card user, as I wrote before, since you said that you're interested in free drivers, I noticed in the Mageia repos these packages:
x11-driver-video-ati
x11-driver-video-radeonhd
I'm almost sure these are the free drivers, but I don't know which one of the two is best for your graphics card (hm... I think the second).
In "Install & Remove Software" if you search for: radeon, some other packages appear to be available too, but I don't know if they are important.
Anyway, maybe it's better to wait for the advice of an ATI card user.

[elmago]

Yes, at one point of time I had both the eth0 and wlan0(?) working at the same time. The MCC would show these two in the GUI.

To get the DWA-160 (RT2870 chip) working I added these two as you said:
rt2870-firmware
kernel-firmware-extra
from non-free repo. Didn't experiment to see if I could get away with just one of these two.
I had the DWA-160 connected and after the packages got installed, I used the MCC's network control center and the WPA-2 password, to get it working. At that stage I yanked the Enet cable and tried to do normal internet activity and everything worked like it should using the wifi only.

I had the RTL8111E working before. Built the downloaded r8168 package from Ralink website. It gave me r8168.ko. Moved it into lib/modules/kernel-version/kernel/drivers/net. Moved out the existing r8169.ko.gz from that area (saved in some other place). Used lsmod to see the r8169 is still loaded (this is the original driver from Mageia-1 installation). Used "rmmod r8169" to unload that. Then "modprobe r8168" loaded the new driver. Then a configuration of the Enet connection got me the internet working without any further problem. I was logged into root while doing all these.

You are right. It is better to wait for someone with ATI experience. A mistake in installation will leave me with CLI and I am not sure how to tweak the xorg.conf and have trouble remembering the vi commands! (I use Emacs ).

In the meantime, if you know where to find cinelerra for Mageia-1, I would add that repo. A plain search for it with the standard 6 repos enabled ( #1,3,11,13,21,23) yields nothing for cinelerra.

[doktor5000]

Next time, please only one problem per thread.

[elmago]

Since this thread is named about network issues and those resolved have gotten resolved, it may be a good idea to close this thread and post my video driver issue in a separate thread. Thanks to doktor5000 for reminding me the the basics.

Thread is to be found at:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1305

~isadora