No Ethernet on Toshiba NB10-A

[Jerry3904]

Before doing that:

1) Could you please launch MX Network Manager and take a screen capture of the second tab ("Linux drivers")?

2) a search of the Forum shows people running that dongle with the driver r8169 which is in the kernel. Can you please open a terminal and run

Code: Select all

sudo modprobe r8169

3) Also, when I run a web search on "Debian RTL8101/2/6E PCI E", I see a lot of complaints and a lot of "Solved." So do not give up...

[Tiamat10]

Hi JayM, Following your advice I did a full install of MX18.1 – then a full update.

Then installed the following extra Kernels;-

4.9.176-antix.1-amd64-smp
4.9.0-9 amd64
Also tried the 4.9.176-antix.1-amd64-smp (systemd)

So along with 4.19.0-1-amd64 not one of these kernels enabled the NB10 Ethernet.

**A common element was; in Netwk Mgr the device had a MAC address of FF:FF:FF…

I did enter the LAN MAC (from the label on the NB10) but this made no difference, still no Ethernet.

**During startup of I noticed “r8169 (unnamed net_device) (uninitialized)” in the displayed text.
Is there a log of this that would give extra clues?

This worried me; if one turns off wifi in the Network Manager wifi goes off and rfkill reports “soft blocked”
However, if one turns off wifi by the keyboard special key rfkill reports “hard blocked” yet the wifi LED is still on!

If the LED is on then all wifi hardware is not off (after all a LED is hardware) so a parameter is telling porkies! and using up my notebook battery when I don't expect it to.
Oddly if run from the demo .iso the LED went out.

So none of the MX security enhanced kernels work for me plus no Ethernet and suspect hardware switching all makes me think Linux may not be for me.

It’s not as if the NB10A is a very old mch. so I am a bit disappointed.

Now going to reload windows – ah well.

** clues?

Many thanks for everyone’s time and help.

[Tiamat10]

Oop’s sorry Jerry3904, I posted my last post before reading yours! Did not realise that the post did not scroll continuously through the thread & had to manually change page.

Modprobe produces no o/p;-

Code: Select all

x@x:~
$ sudo modprobe r8169
[sudo] password for ramx: 
x@x:~
$ 

Screenshot is;-

What is the best way to add the image? Google Drive OK?

[Tiamat10]

Here is a link for

1) Could you please launch MX Network Manager and take a screen capture of the second tab ("Linux drivers")?

hope this works

[JayM]

Here is a link for

1) Could you please launch MX Network Manager and take a screen capture of the second tab ("Linux drivers")?

hope this works

FTFY. You have to use a free image host instead of Google Drive.

[Stevo]

Some older posts for that laptop suggest that adding the "noapic" kernel boot parameter might make the NIC visible.

They also suggest a BIOS update, but I think you have the latest at 1.60.

[Tiamat10]

Some older posts for that laptop suggest that adding the "noapic" kernel boot parameter might make the NIC visible. (Stevo)

Tried that, after a lot of googling – (it’s just as well I don’t have a full time job this takes up a huge amount of time!) There’s good news & bad news.

Bad news is – made no difference to getting the LAN/Ethernet working on any of the 3 kernels I installed.

Good news is - it cured the switching off of the wifi LED when the keyboard function button is toggled.
It did this on all 3 kernels

For any other Linux novice, I found;-
https://access.redhat.com/solutions/58790

This told me to edit a file, which then told me to edit another file. But it worked in the end, it added “noapic” to all the installed Kernels. Also I now know where the 5 sec boot edit time is stored.

I found out where the logs are stored, had look at some but as I am not sure what I am looking for it did not help.

What do Linux users do to search logs for error msgs? Is tere a log manager? Pretty easy in Windows.

[Tiamat10]

BTW I forgot to mention - I found that the network manager will NOT accept the NB10 LAN MAC address but it will accept eth0, to an added Ethernet connection.

adding Device: eth0 would be saved through a reboot. still did not work

[Tiamat10]

As this post has had no further replies, since June 19th, I assume all MX top level geeks are on their summer holidays!

I addition to the MX kernels tried, I have now found out that the NB10 ethernet port won’t work with other distributions either. It will not work with;-

Debian 9.9.0, no real surprise here.
Knoppix 8.2
Fedora 30, Ver. 5 Kernel
To try, openSUSE

I have found some indications, thanks to Jerry3904’s search clues, that it might be possible to get it to work.

As this will take much reading of MAN pages (to get some understanding of what some posts actually mean) I looked for any solution.

A partial solution is to use a USB to Ethernet adaptor. After much research I found that devices which use the Realtek RTL8153 chip had confirmed results with recent Kernels.

I purchased a Anker A7611011 because it had a metal case, 3 LED status lights and used the RTL8153 chip. Plugged it in and it worked (on MX18.1) straight away.

At least this means I can get away from MS and use an up-to-date Linux install and I don’t have to get a new Notebook / Laptop.

In the mean time I can endeavour to get the built-in Ethernet working at my own (slow) pace.

[JayM]

As this post has had no further replies, since June 19th, I assume all MX top level geeks are on their summer holidays!

I hope you meant this as a joke or jest?