[Sderby] SuSE 9.2 IPv6 problem?

Fri Feb 11 19:19:09 GMT 2005

> Kris,
>
> On Wednesday 09 February 2005 16:31, Kris Adcock wrote:
>> Evening all!
>>
>> I'm asking about this on behalf of a friend - this is a paraphrase of
>> his message (names changed to protect the innocent, and all that). He
>> has an Athlon 64 running SuSE 9.2.
>>
>> ---------8<----------
>>
>> Matt spent some time here last evening configuring this box so that I
>> could use the 250GB HDD as a backup receptacle for the data from the
>> Athlon 64.
>>
>> All is well except the following: Matt set up the networking to obtain
>> an IP address using DHCP [from the ADSL router] and all wasn’t well as
>> the Linux box set an IP address which seemed to be in HEX.
>>
>> The next approach was to set up a static IP address this worked when it
>> was set, however after a reboot the address reverted to HEX.
>>
>> Listed below is a printout of part of the ifconfig file:
>>
>> eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:00:E8:8E:68:92
>>            inet6 addr: fe80::200:e8ff:fe8e:6892/64 Scope:Link
>>            UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
>>            RX packets:1 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
>>            TX packets:6 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
>>            collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
>>            RX bytes:262 (262.0 b)  TX bytes:460 (460.0 b)
>>            Interrupt:11
>>
>> lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
>>            inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
>>            UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
>>            RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
>>            TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
>>            collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
>>            RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
>>
>> sit0      Link encap:IPv6-in-IPv4
>>            NOARP  MTU:1480  Metric:1
>>            RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
>>            TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
>>            collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
>>            RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
>>
>> ---------8<----------
>>
>> Now, as far as I can tell from the above (I haven't seen it personally),
>> the network is being configured for IPv6 only  - there's no line in eth0
>> describing the ordinary inet addr. Him saying it's in HEX is because
>> he's confusing the inet6 address with the ordinary inet one.
>>
>> Ditto the loopback adaptor - there's no inet line.
>>
>> sit0 is apparently some form of tunnel for using IPv6.
>>
>> So, has anyone seen this before? Or have a clue which part to start
>> swearing at first? :)
>>
>
> This looks like a case of the box not negotiating an IP address by DHCP.
> Has
> another computer been tested against the router?
>
> Here's my eth0
>
> eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:50:8D:F7:14:C1
>           inet addr:192.168.1.10  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
>           inet6 addr: fe80::250:8dff:fef7:14c1/64 Scope:Link
>           UP BROADCAST NOTRAILERS RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
>           RX packets:16543 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
>           TX packets:10105 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
>           collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
>           RX bytes:6998654 (6.6 Mb)  TX bytes:1255769 (1.1 Mb)
>           Interrupt:193 Memory:e3004000-0
>
>
> My guess is you "friend" has a motherboard with an poorly supported
> Gigabit
> NIC. I know of people having problems with certain onboard NICs. My Athlon
> 64
> has a 3COM Gigabit interface and this works fine with SuSE 9.2. I know
> someone who has a Gigabyte motherboard, I think it has a VIA Ethernet chip
> and this has all sorts of intermittent problems with Linux. There have
> been
> messages to the SuSE mailing list about this in the past, the problem is I
> believe VIA have not released technical details of the chip to the
> OpenSource
> community and what has been done so far is just a stab in the dark. I
> believe
> there are binary drivers on the VIA site and I don't think these behave
> much
> better. As an interim solution I suggest you stick a supported PCI NIC in
> and hope that before long VIA do the right thing and release some workable
> source code.
>
> David
>
> --
> David Bottrill
>
> david at bottrill.org
> www.bottrill.org
> Registered Linux user number 330730
> Internet SIP Phone: 1-747-244-2699
>
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>

Dave's diagnosis is correct, there's no V4 IP address which put simply
means that the DHCP client hasn't got a reply to the requests it has sent
out....or is sending out,  entries in the startup log files should show
that the DHCP request has failed to get an ip address and is
'backgrounding'....

I have an Abit MoBo with a socket 939 AMD 3000 chip,  the Via Gigabit
chipset (via Velocity 6122) works for about 5 minutes before dieing in a
heap of runt packets which does my LAN no good at all :-(.

Typing ipconfig eth0 resulted in a completely normal response rather than
no response, the IP stack simply would not talk to the network and vice
versa, the machine didn't respond to pings.. It worked long enough to boot
but never long enough to apply updates from the SuSE website.

VIA actually have revised drivers on their website (V1.16 I think rather
than v1.13 which is what comes with 9.2), but I couldn't work out how to
replace the drivers and the support site mentioned the later drivers
(which need compiling as they are source code ! ) so I gave up.

The via velocity 6122 chipset worked just fine on Windoze :-(((( 64bit or
32bit.  I had to spend a fiver on a new PCI network card (shockingly
iniquitous I know...)

HTH
Roger.