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Roger

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From: Vancouver, BC, Canada

Registered: 2019-04-06

Posts: 67  

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[SOLVED] B360M-C Motherboard Installation

I have separated this from my previous post which just concerned matters of curiosity. My plan is to do a Devuan install from an iso USB stick on a computer which has a working Ubuntu system installed by the vendor. I have run into a problem early in the install procedure because the installation program reports that no ethernet card is detected. It does present a list of drivers, from which a selection can be made, but there is no way to exit from that screen and continue the process.

Ethernet and video are included in the Intel B360M-C motherboard used by Asus in this machine. Running Ubuntu I can use F2 to get a tty and run regular unix commands; lsmod tells me that a module called e1000e is loaded, which turns out to be a driver for Intel ethernet hardware. e1000e is also included on the list of drivers presented by the Devuan install process, but selecting it does not make a "continue" button available.

I assume that if the driver is listed by the install process it is available in the iso file used to set up a basic system. Maybe that is a wrong assumption and I have to download and install the driver, but it appears that there is a hardware detection problem with the installer. I would appreciate any assistance that anyone could give me for this problem.

I would also welcome any comment about whether this topic belongs under "hardware" rather than "installation".

Last edited by Roger (2020-03-12 03:03:50)

Roger

Member

From: Vancouver, BC, Canada

Registered: 2019-04-06

Posts: 67  

Website

Re: [SOLVED] B360M-C Motherboard Installation

A follow-up to the above: web research indicates that my problem is likely that devuan_ascii_2.1_amd64_netinst.iso does not include a driver for the ethernet section of the Intel B360M-C motherboard used by Asus. The computer provided by the vendor does contain a working installation of Ubuntu, and a check with lsmod shows that a module e1000e is installed, as a component of the 4.15 kernel.

In one of my existing machines currently running Devuan, the e1000e module is present in /lib/modules so it would presumably be available after kernel installation. The problem is then to get the driver into the machine in which Devuan is to be installed, and it now seems that it would be a good idea to follow the advice I was given in my previous thread and use debootstrap to install Devuan in the new machine currently running Ubuntu. It seems an even better idea given that the machine has two hard drives (in preparation for using mdadm to set up RAID1). Devuan can presumably be installed on /dev/hdb, using debootstrap, without messing up the existing Ubuntu installation on /dev/sda; once Devuan is working, Ubuntu can be removed, and RAID1 set up.

It sounds like a fun project; precisely why I got into working with Linux.

kmb

Member

Registered: 2019-07-14

Posts: 4  

Re: [SOLVED] B360M-C Motherboard Installation

There are some different ways also...
You can upgrade your kernel to 4.19.0.x from testing-security/main (deb.devuan.org) or to 5.4.0.x from testing-backports/main (deb.devuan.org). ASCI is relatively old distro BTW. Consider upgrade to Beowulf...
You can compile this driver by yourself of course. The latest driver (3.6 version) can be found on http://e1000.sourceforge.net (and also on http://downloadcenter.intel.com.)

golinux

Administrator

Registered: 2016-11-25

Posts: 3,318  

Re: [SOLVED] B360M-C Motherboard Installation

Never EVER use Debian repos directly.  That could put you in a world of hurt. Devuan package repositories are exclusive. Other repositories, including Debian, Ubuntu, Mint etc, should NOT be used directly.

Also Devuan recommends using the codename (jessie, ascii, beowulf, ceres) rather than the suite (oldstable, stable, testing, unstable) in /etc/apt/sources.list entries. Please go to Devuan Release Information for more details.

https://pkginfo.devuan.org/ is an excellent resource to discover what is available in the Devuan repos.  Also https://pkgmaster.devuan.org/bannedpackages.txt for what will break Devuan.

---

Get answers - Help Devuan - Report a bug - Search packages

kmb

Member

Registered: 2019-07-14

Posts: 4  

Re: [SOLVED] B360M-C Motherboard Installation

Good advice, golinux... These are general names of original Debian repos given in synaptic only, not real internet addresses. It should be: deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged/ beowulf-security main and deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged/ beowulf-backports main as written in my /etc/apt/sources.list...

Roger

Member

From: Vancouver, BC, Canada

Registered: 2019-04-06

Posts: 67  

Website

Re: [SOLVED] B360M-C Motherboard Installation

The advice is appreciated, and is what I follow since I only use the Devuan sources. But I did find debootstrap listed when I run aptitude using my exclusively Devuan sources list; the description given is "Bootstrap a basic Devuan system." Obviously it would handle the init package properly as that is essential to the basic operating system. The idea is that once a basic Devuan system in available, it can be used to install kernel packages, which would provide any necessary modules.

Apropos the e1000e ethernet driver module, I assume that is not included in the netinst.iso download. I do not know enough about the vast varieties of hardware available to know how common the B360M-C motherboard is among Linux users.

Dutch_Master

Member

Registered: 2018-05-31

Posts: 286  

Re: [SOLVED] B360M-C Motherboard Installation

Can't tell you how common this particular chipset is, but you'll probably find the driver on the install-DVD. That by itself is a more complete netinstall medium over the existing .iso and can be used as such (I do, at work ) when choosing a basic install, get the sources.list properly set up and away you go!

kmb

Member

Registered: 2019-07-14

Posts: 4  

Re: [SOLVED] B360M-C Motherboard Installation

Dutch_Master! Read, please, my first post... This driver is compiled as a module in a newer kernels  (4.19.0.x and higher) only, so does not exist on any ASCII install medium (4.9.0.9 version).

fsmithred

Administrator

Registered: 2016-11-25

Posts: 2,486  

Re: [SOLVED] B360M-C Motherboard Installation

The e1000e driver is in my ascii - it's in the kernel configs for 4.9.0-9 and 4.9.0-11. I don't know why you folks aren't seeing it. On my Thinkpad T420, lsmod shows that it's loaded.

If I boot devuan_ascii_2.1_amd64_netinstall.iso I get an ethernet connection on the Thinkpad, and lsmod shows that e1000e is loaded. This installer iso has 4.9.0-11.

kmb

Member

Registered: 2019-07-14

Posts: 4  

Re: [SOLVED] B360M-C Motherboard Installation

Sorry. I should make check anew...

Roger

Member

From: Vancouver, BC, Canada

Registered: 2019-04-06

Posts: 67  

Website

Re: [SOLVED] B360M-C Motherboard Installation

My computer usage is mainly to do programming running compilers and making relatively simple graphics applications (by gaming standards) - so I am happy to stay with whatever the current stable release of Devuan is, and I also appreciate not having to be continually involved in upgrades.

So: I am running the 4.9.0-12 kernel, and my computers have a file

     /lib/modules/4.9.0-12-amd64/kernel/drivers/net/ethernet/intel/e1000e/e1000e.ko

The driver is definitely is there. My problem is that running netinst.iso on a new machine with the intel chipset does not find the ethernet card. I conclude the driver is not in netinst.iso and so my best course of action is to get debootstrap into the machine currently running Ubuntu and use the untar procedure described in instructions. That is probably preferable to using apt to install it, mixing it up with Ubuntu sources.

I'll report progress. It is probably useful to know that the Debian wiki for debootstrap describes the correct procedure for Devuan. I have done a quick check of a test installation of debootstrap on a Devuan virtual machine and it definitely has some Devuan specific features.

fsmithred

Administrator

Registered: 2016-11-25

Posts: 2,486  

Re: [SOLVED] B360M-C Motherboard Installation

The driver must be in the netinstall iso, or I would not have been able to get online. It's possible that the driver in ascii isn't new enough for your new hardware. In that case, you could try some live isos to see which kernel works. If the ascii 2.1 desktop-live doesn't work, you can try it with a backports kernel.  I made one for that purpose:
https://get.refracta.org/files/experime … 5_1512.iso

Note: devuan debootstrap is included in all the live isos.

Roger

Member

From: Vancouver, BC, Canada

Registered: 2019-04-06

Posts: 67  

Website

Re: [SOLVED] B360M-C Motherboard Installation

Progress report: I planned to install a basic version of ascii on an empty disk, using debootstrap on a new computer, as a first step to setting up Devuan. The vendor had installed Ubuntu simply to check whether everything was working. As reported I was unable to use netinstall.iso because an ethernet card was not found. I have had some fun using a mixture of tty2 on the Ubuntu disk and my own efforts on the second disk to set up Devuan, with the initial result that there was no ethernet connection. Using very helpful suggestions from members of this forum, I have now upgraded the 4.9.0 ascii kernel to beowulf's 4.19.0 and the ethernet connection appears and works properly.

So: the problem was, as suggested by others above, that the device driver in kernel 4.9.0 was not able to handle the updated hardware of Intel's B360M chipset. The e1000e driver for Intel has been around, in name at least, for the eight year life of my existing desktop machines, but it has been significantly changed, as is apparent from its increased size. Research on the web suggests that kernel 4.15 or so is necessary for the latest Intel ethernet hardware.

I appreciate the helpful comments and advice from members of this forum. Thanks.