MSI K7N2G-ILSR onboard NIC
 

I recently purchased the MSI K7N2G-ILSR motherboard as part of a new computer. I have had no problems at all setting it up for use in windows, however I am having some difficulties getting the linux drivers functioning properly.

After some considerable struggles with getting the source tarballs to compile, I finally got them compiled. I made the appropriate changes to my /etc/modules.conf file, added the appropriate entries to /etc/modules, and modified /etc/network/interface to include an entry for iface eth0 dhcp

Unfortunately, now the boot up sequence freezes on configuring interfaces and then says done after a pause of about a minute or so. I narrowed the problem down to dhclient which hangs when given the command "dhclient eth0"
Nothing extra is output when dhclient is called with the -e flag

I am running Debian 3.0 r1 with kernel version 2.4.18

Has anyone even managed to get the net drivers working with this motherboard? Do I need a newer kernel? Is there some setting I've missed?

oh yeah, I also changed something in my bios like was suggested in the troubleshooting about PNP OS Installed to 'no'

Thanks.

Almost - I managed to get them working with sarge (which is gonna become 3.1 i think)

I had a few problems with my /etc/modutils/alises files but after that i got it working without any trouble at all. The other thing i did was add nvnet into the /etc/modules file (i think - might not be that one, its the one that speicifed what modules to load at bootup)

Have you tried doing an lsmod an seeing if nvnet is loaded? Does it load if you `modprobe nvnet`? and then re-running dhclient?

The nvnet module appears to be loaded according to lsmod and running 'modprobe nvnet' returns a message about a tainted kernel (as expected for running a non-oss module) but it loads correctly, but dhclient still does its hanging thing.

Are those the only two changes you needed to make to get the module working properly? If so, I might try getting the Sarge install disc, since I did both of them to no avail.

If you've got broadband you can effectively get sarge by just changing you /etc/apt/sources.list

For your chioce of mirror change:

deb http://some.site.com/debian woody main contr... etc.

to

deb http://some.site.com/debian sarge main ...

'woody' could also be stable

Then run aptitude and there should be a list packages to update

The other thing is to try running dhclient-2.2.x instead of dhclient.

HTH