Strange registration messages

[aruhuno]

@Quazz said:

@aruhuno The last time I had this issue I switched ethernet cables and it worked fine. Your mileage may vary of course.

I already tried:

• another cable
• another switch
• another cable on another switch

As many say it’s certainly the card.

[george1421]

@aruhuno If you have time, I would like to see if you can create a FOS-L (FOG OS Live boot flash drive). https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/6532/usb-boot-target-device-into-fog-os-live-fosl-for-debugging

Actually I want you to follow the Option #4 process:
https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/6532/usb-boot-target-device-into-fog-os-live-fosl-for-debugging/19

While I don’t think this will give us different results than PXE booting, I would like you to create this boot flash drive to see if we eliminate the PXE and iPXE parts out of the booting process, does anything change. Booting with this flash drive will send you directly to the debug console. I’m interested in when the link light comes on. Does it repeat the pattern of pxe booting or do you get an IP address right away.

I’ve done quite a bit of research on this in the last few days and it seams these realtek NICs are generally a problem for linix. I have found references that this particular nic 8169 driver is trouble, where the recommendation is to black list this linux driver and to use the 8168 driver instead. If this is the case then it is a kernel builder issue.

[Tom Elliott]

@aruhuno I ran into a similar problem last night. For some reason, the FOG_WEB_HOST setting under: FOG Configuration Page->FOG Settings->Web Server was blank when it should have been /fog. Please check this setting and make sure it’s set to /fog. It should work then (hopefully).

[aruhuno]

@george1421
Hum, just a question in your script: line 18, it’s written if not wait up to 10 seconds but where is the sleep command ? It’s possible to edit this file directly in my FOG installation?

@Tom-Elliott:
It’s not blank for me

[Sebastian Roth]

@aruhuno said:

Hum, just a question in your script: line 18, it’s written if not wait up to 10 seconds but where is the sleep command ? It’s possible to edit this file directly in my FOG installation?

Unfortunately not. The script is packed into the init.xz file and cannot be modified as is. But you can extract the init.xz and modify it! About your question on the wait. Take a look at line 33 (sleep for 1 second) and line 26 (loop ten times or till the NIC reports to be up). Possibly your NIC reports UP status although it is actually down. Please PXE boot in debug mode and check cat /sys/class/net/eth0/carrier (1 means connected, 0 means disconnected). This check works for most NICs I suppose as users don’t report having issues. But possibly your NIC is behaving differently.

Please let us know about your findings so we can add this to improve the network startup script…

[Wayne Workman]

@aruhuno Just an FYI, the E73 is in our working hardware list: https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php?title=WorkingDevices

[Sebastian Roth]

@george1421 said:

I’ve done quite a bit of research on this in the last few days and it seams these realtek NICs are generally a problem for linix. I have found references that this particular nic 8169 driver is trouble, where the recommendation is to black list this linux driver and to use the 8168 driver instead. If this is the case then it is a kernel builder issue.

You are right, there are a lot of posts and discussions on this r8169 driver included in the kernel and a lot of people say that using the official r8168 driver from realtek fixed things for them. But in those cases the people mostly couldn’t get a proper connection at all. In our case it seams to be just an issue of waiting till the interface is fully up. As well most of those posts date back to 2008-2011. A lot has changed in the kernel since then! For example see this.

@aruhuno Again I may ask you to boot into debug upload mode and check cat /sys/class/net/eth0/carrier. As well, please run ethtool eth0 | grep "Link detected" - both before and after running ip link set eth0 up by hand.

Edit: Found an interesting parameter for the udhcpc. Tom added it to the inits. You might want to upgrade and run the installer again to get the latest inits. This might possibly fix things for you…

[aruhuno]

@Sebastian-Roth
I’ve updated FOG this morning:

@Sebastian-Roth said:

Edit: Found an interesting parameter for the udhcpc. Tom added it to the inits. You might want to upgrade and run the installer again to get the latest inits. This might possibly fix things for you…

So, I’m making init with updated script

@Wayne-Workman said:

@aruhuno Just an FYI, the E73 is in our working hardware list: https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php?title=WorkingDevices

On FOG 1.2.0, yes, but not on 1.3.0 and I need it to deploy Windows 10 with FOG Client.

[george1421]

@aruhuno The devs worked on the init scripts over the weekend. Since you just upgraded to the current trunk release, does the network interface come up when you try to register this Lenovo today?

If the updates inits do not work. Could you repeat the same steps from earlier with this modification?

Use this udhcpc command
udhcpc -i eth0 --now

Then when the command times out (or better picks up an up address)
cat /sys/class/net/eth0/carrier

If the carrier value is still 0 wait 30 seconds and issue the udhcpc command again. What they were looking at is to find a way to detect if the network adapter has a slow startup. They are working hard to find a way to get these network adapters to init right.

[Wayne Workman]

@aruhuno said:

On FOG 1.2.0, yes, but not on 1.3.0 and I need it to deploy Windows 10 with FOG Client.

What I meant was if it worked before, we can get it working again.

[aruhuno]

@george1421
Sorry for the wait. This morning, I’ve updated FOG (now in 6651) and problem persist:

@Wayne-Workman
I hope so.

Even if it’s not finished, thanks everybody for the help!

[george1421]

@aruhuno That is disappointing the 30 second delay between the first dhcp request and the second chance request did not resolve the issue.

One last request if you still have this setup (as you have pictured), its probably been several minutes now sitting at the second chance dhcp request. Would you please try one more time for the udhcpc command? If it does not come up after 5 minutes the network link will never come up and we are back to a linux driver issue why this interface is not becoming ready.

I do have to ask this just to eliminate the obvious. “Can you plug another known good device into the network cable to check to see if the cable or network port is defective?” I doubt this is the case since you are getting into the Fog Operating System.

[aruhuno]

@george1421

I have done several tests:

• use of another cable
• use another switch
• use another cable to another switch

[george1421]

Well you have done as much as possible. I think the developers are going to have to look into the realtek driver and how its being activated. There seems to be something missing in the FOS client.

[Sebastian Roth]

@aruhuno This looks like the interface is not coming up at all?!?! In your posts last week you were able to somehow get it up/working simply be running udhcpc -i eth from the shell!!

After new test, when I’m run in debug:

• NIC is on everytimes
• ifconfig no IP
• ping no response

If I run udhcpc -i eth0 or /etc/init.d/S40network stop && sleep 2/etc/init.d/S40network start, everything is working.

So something must have changed I suppose… Please take a look at your older postings and see if you can reproduce what you had back then.

[aruhuno]

@george1421
Perhaps, but as @Sebastian-Roth points out , last week I could go up the interface with the udhcpc command.

@Sebastian-Roth
I’ve already tested and impossible to reproduce, something has change (script? kernel?).

[Sebastian Roth]

@aruhuno What if you do ip link set eth0 up and wait for half a minute. LEDs coming up? Chat (right upper corner)?

[aruhuno]

With the help of @Sebastian-Roth, it works!

I had actually tried other switch but had not returned to the original swith (the one I was at the opening of this topic).

Solved by mini-switch and the new init script, thanks all!

[george1421]

Interesting, so this “could be” what Tom talked about 802.3az (green ethernet) issue? http://www.excitingip.com/2534/an-introduction-to-ieee-802-3az-energy-efficient-ethernet/

Putting a dumb mini-switch in between the building switch and the target device broke (blocked) so the target goes into active mode. This is only speculation. I wonder if there is a command switch to turn this “feature” off when we init the network adapter??

[Sebastian Roth]

@george1421 said:

Putting a dumb mini-switch in between the building switch and the target device broke (blocked) …

Actually it was the other way round!! We couldn’t get the NIC up (LED stayed off) whatever we tried. Then I suggested to put a mini switch in between. And that made it work right away! What is really strange about the whole thing is that iPXE (as well as PXE ROM) can actually bring the NIC up, send packets and receive an IP… Only the kernel seams to have an issue when bringing up the NIC. But as soon as you use dump network equipment it seams to work. I still wonder if this is related to spanning tree or something else?!