Which installation iso has atheros ar8161 driver? [Solved]

Gusar · Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2012 4:00 pm Post subject:

Hmm, let me find a 64bit machine somewhere

...

Ok, syslinux is being quirky. Use this syslinux.cfg, it works here with it (adjust usblabel of course).

helio · Apprentice Joined: 08 Apr 2006 Posts: 237

Gusar · Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2012 4:39 pm Post subject:

No idea what's wrong then. It works here.

Let's do some debugging: When you're at the ramfs command prompt, run this:

helio · Apprentice Joined: 08 Apr 2006 Posts: 237

Gusar, the command findfs has no problem finding the usb device when running from the [ramfs/] prompt.

The strange thing is, not only the latest version of your liveUSB couldn't boot, even the earlier version that used to work has stopped working now, which got stuck at the same place:

Loading Kernel ....
Loading initrd ... ready.
Waiting 10 seconds for device usbdrive (my usb label) ............
:: Something went wrong or break requested. Launching shell.
[ramfs /] #

The only thing I did before the last time the liveUSB was still working was partitioning a 2nd spare hard drive and transferring the stage3 and portage tar balls onto it. After I couldn't chroot, I exit the liveUSB and it has stopped to boot back in ever since. I wonder if it has anything to do the BIOS boot manager.

Gusar · Posted: Sat Aug 04, 2012 10:49 am Post subject:

Did you by any chance give the second disk the same label as the usb stick? Or maybe you didn't give it any label and this screws up findfs somehow. Does the label have a space in it? I just noticed the usblabel variable isn't quoted in the script, so spaces will probably screw it up. But that can't be since it worked before. Unless you changed the label of the stick.

As you can see I'm just blindly guessing here, as I really have no idea why it would suddenly stopped working. You get to the ramfs prompt, so it can't be a boot manager issue. Since findfs at the prompt works, you could do "less init" to see what the init script does and do those steps manually.

Edit: I'm currently uploading a version that can handle spaces in the label, should be uploaded in a few minutes.

helio · Apprentice Joined: 08 Apr 2006 Posts: 237

Gusar, I have figured out what went wrong. I typed in the lower case of the usb label in syslinux.cfg file, whereas the findfs was looking for the upper case of the usb label. I remember initially I set the usb label in lower case, but for some reason and at certain point unknown to me the actual label of the usb has since turned into upper case. After I changed the usb label into upper case in syslinux.cfg file, both 32bit and 64bit version of the liveUSB has started to work again.

There is a new problem with the new 64bit version. The keyboard doesn't map right. For example, when I hit the "-" key it turned up as a '; and the "+" key turned up as a *. I wonder if the default keyboard is assumed to be US-keyboard, or if there is an option during the boot process. Both the 32bit and the 64bit kernel in the new version have this keyboard issue. I don't remember the old 32bit alone version had this problem.

Gusar · Posted: Sat Aug 04, 2012 2:20 pm Post subject:

I explained the keyboard in an earlier post, you probably didn't see the edit: The very first version I uploaded, I changed locale and keymap to US. For any later version I didn't bother with that anymore, so they're set to Slovenian. Open a console (press F12 for a drop-down one

) and then

helio · Apprentice Joined: 08 Apr 2006 Posts: 237

Gusar, thanks so much. The setxkbmap command worked. Sorry, I didn't notice your edit to the earlier post on the graphic card. Now I can resume the installation.

Gusar · Posted: Sat Aug 04, 2012 4:14 pm Post subject:

Ok, if you download again, you can add keymap=us to the APPEND line in syslinux.cfg (or press <tab> in the syslinux menu and add it there) and it'll be loaded. Available layouts are de, fr, si, us. I want to keep this thing as small as possible, but those four layouts should cover the most common scenarios.

helio · Apprentice Joined: 08 Apr 2006 Posts: 237

Thanks, Gusar, I will try the new version later. For now I am struggling with grub. What happened was after I installed gentoo and grub into my 2nd hard drive (HD), it failed to boot. I can see the grub menu itself after booting from the 2nd HD from bios, but after that I got the following error message from grub:

root (hd1,0)
Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x83
kernel /boot/kernel-genkernel-x86_64-3.3.8-gentoo root=/dev/ram0 real_root=/dev/sdb3
Error 17: Cannot mount selected partition

My 2nd HD is partitioned as /dev/sdb1 (boot); /dev/sdb2 (swap); and /dev/sdb3 (root). I used the gparted utility to generate the partition/file system. So I have no clue why grub was having difficulty. One thing I noticed was that the partition in the 2nd HD starts from block 2048 instead of 1. I wonder whether that has anything to do with the grub failure.

Gusar · Posted: Sun Aug 05, 2012 10:29 am Post subject:

The first partition should start at 2048, that's ok. It's a trick to ensure proper alignment for 4kb sector disks or SSDs. It also provides space for the bloated grub2. All partitions should start at a multiple of 2048, gparted automatically does that.

About the grub error... no idea, it's been a while since I used it. My suggestion would be to simply go with syslinux. Do you have MBR or GPT partitions? The installation is different depending on that.

helio · Apprentice Joined: 08 Apr 2006 Posts: 237

Gusar, thanks for the information and the suggestion.

I am now able to boot from the 2nd HD after making the following change to grub.conf

root (hd1,0) --> root (hd0,0)

It doesn't make much sense, but apparently grub considers the 2nd HD as the first hard drive, even though device wise the 2nd HD is still /dev/sdb.

Anyway, the installed kernel can get boot into the basic command line console without graphic or ethernet working, which may require additional tuning.

On the other hand, Gusar, do you mean I could use syslinux to boot the 2nd HD w/o using the grub? My 2nd HD has only MBR.

Gusar · Posted: Sun Aug 05, 2012 12:53 pm Post subject:

helio · Apprentice Joined: 08 Apr 2006 Posts: 237

Another thing is that I copied the driver file alx.ko from your liveUSB to my gentoo installation at the 2nd HD (/lib/module/...../alx), but modprobe command couldn't find the module. Something else must be missing. I also tried to build the alx driver from the compat-wireless package but ended up with bunch of errors. Gusar can you share how you built the alx driver?

Edit: The latest version (07-03) of compat-wireless package I downloaded earlier didn't work; but I found an earlier version (03-12) that does work. So please ignore the post above.

Gusar · Posted: Sun Aug 05, 2012 2:55 pm Post subject:

I compiled the alx driver by patching the kernel with the patch available here: https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/8/27/52, then selecting it in "make gconfig"

When it comes to compat-wireless, you need to download the package that has a "c" in the name, for example "compat-wireless-2012-07-03-pc.tar.bz2". Then you do

helio · Apprentice Joined: 08 Apr 2006 Posts: 237

Thanks Gusar, I have learned a lot from your replies. I tried the compat-wireless-2012-07-03-p.tar.bz2 download first which didn't work (missing "c" but there was no way for me to know that). Then I just tried the compat-wireless-2012-03-12-p.tar.bz2 download using "./scripts/driver-select alx ..." and it worked fine. Of course, your approach is way more elegant.

Edit1: compat-wireless-2012-03-12-p.tar.bz2 worked but the network transfer out of it was extremely slow. I had to switch to the compat-wireless-2012-07-03-pc.tar.bz2 package as Gusar suggested, in order to get a reasonable network transfer speed.