Problem installing on Jetway NF99FL-525

Hey all, I am having problems running LinuxCNC from the 2.6 Live+install ISO.

My system is a Jetway NF99FL-525 Motherboard with 4GB of RAM and a 500GB drive attached. The installation went okay, and the system then gets part way through the boot sequence.

The last thing I see on the boot text is something about setting up network, but then the screen blanks, and I get another text screen that starts with "setting run level to 0". On other words, it is shutting down, which it then does.

I've tried disabling internal sound cards, second network card, and setting the MB to the safe defaults in BIOS, but no luck.

I can boot into the text failsafe mode, but not the full mode

Any ideas what I need to configure to get this up & running?

Hi

At a guess, I would look at video.

The network connection is probably subject of the last kernel message before the X server is launched, if it fails you will get a blank screen.

It looks like it uses the ICH9R chipset, which has one of the awful closed source GMA 31xx video chips.
Lack of support for these in Linux plagued some of the early Atom based boards.

Boot into the failsafe recovery mode and then from the command line run startx

I imagine this will fail with errors confirming the video issue.

If so, it is likely that Wheezy now supports these chipsets, kernel support was starting to come through last time I looked at it, in the later kernels.

Download the stock Wheezy iso and install that instead to check.
If that works, we can try getting the appropriate driver built for the 3.4.9-rtai kernel

When you get that far come back and I will have some questions regards which drivers are loaded etc

regards

Hi

Having got back on my main Linux box, if the issue is video, I think I have found the difference between 3.4.9 and the stock Debian kernels.

The same problematic driver which I previously chased down for the D2500 atom boards, the gma500_gfx driver, is missing from the 3.4.9-rtai build
It is however present in the stock Debian Wheezy 3.2.0-4 kernel build.

I seem to recall that the frame buffer was different too, but that can be looked into.

The main thing to do is test as outlined and if it does appear to be video, try installing the stock debian iso.

If your internet connection is not too good get the all in one iso
cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/7.7.0/i386/...0-i386-lxde-CD-1.iso

otherwise get the net-install, which is smaller and downloads the rest as required
cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/7.7.0/i386/...7.0-i386-netinst.iso

If that works, we can try to take it from there.

regards

Hmm. Okay, so I booted into the failsafe mode and typed the command startx. It then went into the desktop GUI mode without incident, and I was able to start the EMC software. No network access, though.

So, is it not the video? That would seem to indicate that it might be something else that happens at about the same time.

Is it still worth trying the stock Debian install?

Hi,

No, if it is not the video, then the networking is never getting up ie not even contacting the router.

The two things happen right after each other, if the network does not get up, it sits there with that message and if the video driver is wrong the screen clears, but remains blank and does not go into graphics mode.

Need you to do
sudo lspci -vv > lspci.txt
in a terminal and attach the resultant lspci.txt file.

This will show what network chip you have and will also show what driver is in use for the video, which will be interesting.
It may be the generic intel driver now works with this video.

Hopefully just a matter of loading the right firmware, which is probably non-free so
has to be specifically fetched.

regards

Okay, the lscpi.txt is attached. According to Jetway, this MB uses "2 * Intel 82574L PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet LAN"

I am assuming that the critical part of the text is this:


A bit of poking around reveals that there are Intel drivers for this : downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.asp...lang=eng&ProdId=3023

Are these the correct ones, or is there a preferred alternative?

I see you are on line now

Also do a
dmesg > dmesg.txt
and attach that too, then we can see what messages were produced when the kernel tried to bring up the network connection

Sometimes if the driver is right but the firmware is missing, the driver outputs specifically what is missing and needing to be installed.

regards

Okay, this dmesg.txt is from the failsafe mode boot, then startx.

Do you need one from a failed boot?

A bit of poking around reveals that there are Intel drivers for this : downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.asp...lang=eng&ProdId=3023

Are these the correct ones, or is there a preferred alternative?

Starting to read various bug reports, now I know what chip it is, there have been quite a few problems with the driver, some quite recently.

Download the new driver anyway, but you will require a build environment as it is source code, leave it for now

I'll await the dmesg output

regards

Do you need one from a failed boot?

Yes, boot normally and when it hangs, press Ctrl Alt F1 and you will get a text screen login

Login and do
dmesg > /home/yourname/dmesg.txt

Then go back and do a recovery boot and retrieve it

There are no messages about network at the end of the dmesg you posted thus far, just the e1000e driver finding eth0 and eth1
but the copyright is 1999- 2012, so it is not a new driver

regards