binarybasher

Thanks, I sent an email to the Mandriva team who recommended that I create a bug entry, I think it was definitely worth while. Now I know that somebody is assigned to it and working on a resolution for those affected. That's very interesting... you seemed to have gone to a lot of effort, thank you. I believe the problem is likely to be with the network card issuing the mac in reverse, this is then interpreted as an incorrect/faulty mac by forcedeth and so a new/random mac is automatically created. Unfortunately, this causes a number of problems (having a different mac after each boot). One problem (a big one) is that udev creates a new config entry for the new mac, therefore issuing it as a new ethX interface - I resolve by deleting the udev config for ethX interfaces. The good thing about doing it this way is that the network config for eth0 is retained and therefore you don't have to configure the network after each boot. Another issue is that if like me your modem/router/dhcp-server issues you an IP Address based on your mac, you're going to receive a new IP Address after each boot... to resolve I had to assign a static IP Address in the network config for eth0. (not the best solution, but it works for me) OpenSuSe and Fedora both work fine with this network card, which brings me to believing that it is fixable... I would guess that if the forcedeth detects a faulty mac then it could try reversing the mac before issuing a random mac... Unfortunately, like you I do not really have enough experience at this time to edit the forcedeth source, recompile etc... but I'm sure the Mandriva team are looking in to this as a solution... Thanks Lizard, binarybasher

I also found that I had to configure the network (eth0) interface to use a static IP (my router was issuing a new IP after each boot, because it would tie the IP to the mac, which was changing), this was required to allow me to setup firewall rules for incoming ports... Also, I've created a bug on the Mandriva bug report site: http://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=37531 binarybasher

I have to say, I've been using various linux distro's for the past 2.5 years on my home machine with no MS Windows in sight... I've test driven the majority of the main stream distro's including Xandros, Fedora, OpenSuSe, Gentoo, Ubunto, Mandrake and Mandriva. I found Fedora and OpenSuSe to be the most robust and complete up until recently. I recently downloaded the live cdrom version of Mandriva 2008 (it was for my daughters computer, bless her) and gave it a little test run on my machine (which at the time was running OpenSuSe 10.3). I was astonished at the speed of the distro, the live cdrom was a 32bit kernel and running from cdrom I expected it to be a lot slower than my OpenSuSe 10.3 (64bit), but I was wrong... in fact it was so much faster that by that alone I had made my mind up to give it a try (install it). Of course I soon found other things that I appreciated... one of which was/is the excellent 3D effects which are absolutely fantastic on the desktop. Not only are the 3D effects for the desktop great fun to use and play with, but they're also very stable in Mandriva 2008. Both OpenSuSe and Fedora 3D effects were not stable, they had my X windows crashing frequently, so much so that I simply disabled them (although the first time I found compiz I was blown away by the effects, but not the stability). Okay, I think I've given you my message that Mandriva 2008 is pretty darn good when matched up against the likes of Fedora and OpenSuSe (although I still have a soft spot for them both). One thing that I may not have mentioned is that although I've installed various distro's over the last 2.5 years, I should have mentioned that by simply making sure my 'home' directory is in fact a separate partition, I found installing any distro a breeze... and so if I got bored with the distro or mangled my configs, or even just wanted to try something new... it wasn't any trouble, apart from the delay in waiting for the new distro to install ;-) I'm glad more MS users are looking at using Linux, and I'm really glad they're talking about it too... binarybasher

Okay well, it incremented the ethx number... hmmm... I played around a little more and ended up with the following changes: 1. Edited the '/etc/rc.local' file and replaced the earlier added modprobe lines with the following: #tidy udev eth if [ -f /etc/udev/rules.d/61-net_config.rules ]; then rm -f /etc/udev/rules.d/61-net_config.rules fi modprobe -r forcedeth modprobe forcedeth sleep 2s #tidy udev eth if [ -f /etc/udev/rules.d/61-net_config.rules ]; then rm -f /etc/udev/rules.d/61-net_config.rules fi 2. Edited the '/etc/init.d/network' file and inserted the following lines just after both the 'start)' and 'stop)' lines: #tidy udev eth if [ -f /etc/udev/rules.d/61-net_config.rules ]; then rm -f /etc/udev/rules.d/61-net_config.rules fi The result is eth0 connects after each boot, although during the boot process I do still see the eth0 failed message... not bothered though. Hope this helps somebody else... shame Mandriva haven't got this right though... :-\ binarybasher

Okay, I've put in place an automated work-around... I've only rebooted once and so will need to try it again in a min :-) [system: Mandriva PowerPack 2008] My fix (not sure if part 2 is required) 1. clean up all entries regarding ethx interfaces and removing any reference to forcedeth from the modprobe.conf - in '/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/'remove all 'ifcfg-eth*' files - in '/etc/udev/rules.d/' edit the 61_net_config.rules file and remove all entries (you can leave the comments ;-) ) - in '/etc/modprobe.conf' edit and remove any references to forcedeth or ethx 2. insert a blacklist entry in the '/etc/modprobe.d/' directory by creating a new file and adding the line 'blacklist forcedeth' in to it 3. edit '/etc/rc.local' and insert the following two lines (the first line to remove forcedeth if it's loaded, the second to (re-)load it) - modprobe -r forcedeth - modprobe forcedeth * no need to insert the '-' at the beginning of the lines Okay, well after first boot it was a success... I didn't notice any failed entries in the log and eth0 appeared connected. I expect one of two things to happen on next boot (about to try it next) - eth0 will come up again without any issues - or eth1 will be created by udev, but I guess it should still come up successfully I'll post a response in just a mo.

Hi, I can't believe it... this is exactly the same problem as I'm experiencing... I've just installed Mandriva PowerPack 2008 on my machine, replacing OpenSuSe 10.3. OpenSuSe 10.3 was getting a little sluggish and so I tried the Mandriva live cdrom, it was very impressive and so I thought I'd install it fully. Oh boy, I can't believe the network card cannot be remembered over the reboot... It sounds so simple and is very annoying. I researched around and found it hard to come up with something useful, other than how to clear down the numerous ethx entries... It doesn't seem to make any different though, I've not been able to fix it. As this is the latest version of Mandriva (2008) I figured the forcedeth would be fine, I've certainly carried out all updates... The work around is to run the network manager once in X windows and setup a new eth connection... OpenSuSe never had this trouble... is there a fix out there??? Cheers for the information already on this thread and I'd appreciate if somebody has a good solution (will probably need some simple steps though ;-) ) Here's my card (integrated with m/board) details: Identification Vendor: ‎nVidia Corporation Description: ‎MCP61 Ethernet Media class: ‎Bridge Connection Bus: ‎PCI PCI domain: ‎0 Bus PCI #: ‎0 PCI device #: ‎7 PCI function #: ‎0 Vendor ID: ‎0x10de Device ID: ‎0x03ef Sub vendor ID: ‎0x1849 Sub device ID: ‎0x03ef Misc Module: ‎forcedeth That darn mac address... I don't understand why it's fine in OpenSuSe (and Fedora!) but not in Mandriva... any ideas? If it's going to go on then I'll be forced(eth) (pun in tended!) to re-install either OpenSuSe or Fedora, which are both great too... but I would like to give Mandriva a good go first! Thank you,