Nforce2 LTSP success

[Lockheed]

Last week, I decided to try this, even though I've read posts saying it's not supported. I am happy to report that I now have an Asus A7N8X Deluxe (Nforce2 chipset motherboard) booting by LTSP off the NVIDIA NIC and happily folding away.

What I did:

1) Downloaded kernel 2.4.24 from kernel.org
2) Downloaded the forcedeth patch from http://www.hailfinger.org/carldani/linux/patches/forcedeth/ and applied it to the kernel 2.4.24 source. (FYI, I used the forcedeth_2_4_patch_v20.txt)
3) Configured the kernel to include the forcedeth driver in the NIC section.
4) Compiled the kernel and modules, used ltsp_initrd kit (mknbi) and generate initrd.
5) Copied the files to the proper place /tftpboot/lts, etc
6) Booted my Nforce2 machine, and celebrated as it worked!

It should be noted that I used the latest version of pxelinux (2.08) as the older version wouldn't load properly.

I used the default LTSP kernel config and only changed the option to include the forcedeth drivers. I will be happy to send the compiled kernel/initrd if someone has space to host it.

--Lockheed

[Edit] It seems there's another way to do this. David Hays over at SPCR forums pointed out this link: http://www.mail-archive.com/ltsp-discuss@lists.sourceforge.net/msg15517.html

 

[Bill Clo]

And this means what, to those of us who aren't in the know?

 

[Arkaine23]

This means you can network boot an Nforce2 board off the Nforce2 NIC from a Linux LTSP server and use Nforce2 boards for diskless folding monsters. They are no the cheapest solution in the motherboard department when considered for diskless farming, but are usually a bit better for overclocking.

 

[Bill Clo]

Thanks for the explanation.

 

[turmelle]

Nice work Lockheed!

Hopefully this can get wrapped into LTSP 4 so it'll work "out of the box".

 

[mantastic]

hey arkaine, when is the new overclockix coming out? i love the technomancer release you made, even though it is broken a little. also, what is happening with the version of jollix you were working on?

anyways, i love your work man. keep it up

 

[sharp]

great work. nice flat blade love w/ NF2.

 

[haysdb]

From the link Lockheed posted above about an alternate way of adding nForce2 support to LTSP...

Don Burns wrote
2) The driver for the network device must be precompiled, added to the initrd and the initrd linuxrc script must be edited to hard code the NIC variable to be nvnet. We couldn't find a cleaner way to do this. The nvidia network device doesn's seem to be queriable as linuxrc would like.

I have a nvnet.o already on my server. How would I add it to the initrd?

I don't know what he means about hard coding the NIC variable, but it doesn't sound good. I already have four KM400 chipset boards that I don't wish to break just to get one nForce2 board running.

It seems to me this could be handled in the lts.conf file, but I don't know how.

I emailed the author, Don Burns, several days ago, but have not received a reply.

David

 

[haysdb]

I guess the answer was right there in Lockheed's instructions:

...used ltsp_initrd kitkernel (mknbi) and generate initrd.

Not sure what that MEANS yet, but at least it provides a clue as to what to look for.

David

 

[haysdb]

OK, rather than reinventing the wheel, I will just try to follow as best I can in Lockheed's footsteps. If the forcedeth driver works, then to hell with nVidia's proprietary driver and the Royal PITA it causes for Linux users who want to use their product.

I will be back at whatever point I get stuck. Hopefully that's not step #1.

Edit:
1) Download kernel 2.4.24. Done.
2) Download the forcedeth patch. Done.
2.1) Apply the patch. Done.

[root@fahserv linux-2.4.24]# patch -p1 < ../forcedeth_2_4_patch.txt
patching file Documentation/Configure.help
patching file drivers/net/Config.in
patching file drivers/net/Makefile
patching file drivers/net/forcedeth.c

3) Configure the kernel to use the forcedeth driver. I give up. How do I do that? 'make xconfig' does not list the forcedeth driver with the 10/100 Ethernet devices. I also tried 'make menuconfig' but it's not listed there either. Does this mean the patch did not work?

Edit: Nevermind. It's listed as "Reverse Engineered nForce Ethernet support (EXPERIMENTAL)". It's grayed out, which means I first have to go into "Code maturity level options" and checkmark the 'y' box for "Prompt for development and/or incomplete code/drivers", then I can go back and enable the forcedeth driver.

David

 

[haysdb]

4) Compile the kernel and modules:

# make dep && make clean && make zImage && make modules

System is 734 kB
System is too big. Try using bzImage or modules.
make[1]: *** [zImage] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/root/ltsp/linux-2.4.24/arch/i386/boot'
make: *** [zImage] Error 2

Now what?

Edit: bzImage. OK, now am I ready to run the buildk script, or is there something else I need to do first? make install?

I'm reading the LTSP documentation now.

David

 

[haysdb]

I have a new kernel installed and my four VIA KM400 boards are up and running on the new kernel, but the nForce2 isn't.

PXE entry point found (we hope) at 9953:0E57
My IP address seems to be C0A80166 192.168.1.102
ip=192.168.1.102:192.168.1.100:192.168.1.100:255.255.255.0

and then nothing more. It just sits there.

Do I need to specify 'forcedeth' in some configuration file, either ltsp.conf or dhcp.conf? If so, where and how?

David

 

[Arkaine23]

Originally posted by mantastic
hey arkaine, when is the new overclockix coming out? i love the technomancer release you made, even though it is broken a little. also, what is happening with the version of jollix you were working on?

anyways, i love your work man. keep it up

I have a bad habit of making typos when I write scripts. I fixed cfgfold which had an extraneous " on an echo command. I added XFCE and updated a few packages and just uploaded the new iso yesterday.

I'm getting in gear on the other iso's. I just saw a minimal KDE-based remaster that uses a 2.6 kernel and has firebird and mplayer... pretty nice for a mini CD.

My boss wants me to make a remaster that will mount an NFS share on our network and install gentoo or debian images so we have a quickstart for reinstalling our machines. This means my workstation has been converted to a remaastering box, and I'll be taking apart jollix, morphix, clusterknoppix, and prometeus and arkaine-ifying them for DC apps and perhaps some desktop tweaking.

I can't say when these will be ready. I'm sure I can do a quick remaster of clusterknoppix- just adding the DC clients and scripts, so people using clusteroverclockix on more than one machine will have an instant mosix cluster in the bargain.

The others are more removed from the typical knoppix layout and so I'll have to put more work into remastering them. I expect to start popping out new iso's in a week or two and just keep releasing a steady stream of them for the rest of the year.

Some of it depends on what happens with my job. I may move up from part-time admin to part-time admin + noobie computer/electrical engineer. That would take a big chunk out of the time I have for remastering... But I am trying to take on some protege's so that DC clients and the scripts I've written start making it into more and more live CD's.

 

[haysdb]

Originally posted by haysdb
I have a new kernel installed and my four VIA KM400 boards are up and running on the new kernel, but the nForce2 isn't.

PXE entry point found (we hope) at 9953:0E57
My IP address seems to be C0A80166 192.168.1.102
ip=192.168.1.102:192.168.1.100:192.168.1.100:255.255.255.0

and then nothing more. It just sits there.

The answer to this problem was in Lockheed's original post:

Originally posted by Lockheed
It should be noted that I used the latest version of pxelinux (2.08) as the older version wouldn't load properly.

I was running v1.66, so just needed to upgrade to pxelinux.0 2.08.

Now I am getting the message "could not automatically detect the network card". I'm trying to figure out where I can specify a particular driver. I have tried adding a section to ltsp.conf, specifying MODULE_01 = forcedeth.o, but this doesn't SEEM to work (unless I have a syntax error or something). The option-128 stuff in dhcpd.conf is, I THINK just for ISA NICs. I haven't read anything that would lead me to believe it works for integrated NICs. And finally, I can create a special pxelinux.cfg configuration file, but what's the syntax for specifying which ethernet driver to load? Hmmm, maybe I need an update to whatever program it is that detects the NIC and loads the right driver?

David

 

[haysdb]

I am getting closer. REAL close. But not quite there yet either.

In order to specify the specific NIC driver I wanted to load, I created a pxe configuration file for just this blade (IP address 192.168.1.102 = hexadecimal C0A80166), and passed the name of the driver to the kernel on the command line:

# cat /tftpboot/lts/2.4.24-ltsp-1/pxelinux.cfg/C0A80166
prompt=0
label linux
        kernel bzImage-2.4.24-ltsp-1
        append init=/linuxrc rw root=/dev/ram0 initrd=initrd-2.4.24-ltsp-1.gz NIC=forcedeth

The error I'm getting now is:

Loading: forcedeth.o
modprobe: Can't open dependencies file /lib/modules/2.4.24/modules.dep (No such file or directory)

ERROR!  loading module: forcedeth.o failed !

David

 

[haysdb]

And the crowd goes WILD!

My nForce2 board (Biostar M7NCG 400) is now running Folding@Home after successfully PXE booting over the network, using the Reverse Engineered ethernet driver for nForce 'forcedeth' driver.

My last problem was I had forgotten to remove a line from ltsp.conf which was also loading the forcedeth driver. I believe the problem, other than trying to load the same module twice, is that by the time ltsp.conf is "run", the initrd (initial ramdisk) has been unmounted, hence the "no such file or directory" message. Don't quote me on that. I'd have to study the boot sequence to say for sure.

David

 

[Chugiak]

Thanks for the details. I'm gonna have to try that with my Win 98se box that is most prone to lockup. I'm betting the OS plays a big role.

 

[Lockheed]

It is possible to have the Nforce2 NIC autodetect, and use either the nvnet.o or forcedeth.o by editing the /etc/niclist in the initrd.

1) gunzip the initrd .gz file
2) make a directory: mkdir /mnt/initrd
3) mount -t ext2 -o loop <initrd filename> /mnt/initrd
4) cd /mnt/initrd/etc
5) use a text editor (vi, pico, etc) to open the file: niclist
6) Add a line that reads:
10DE:0066 forcedeth.o
OR
10DE:0066 nvnet.o

7) The modules need to be part of the initrd image, and the modules.dep file must have an entry for the driver. The files are in: /mnt/initrd/lib/modules/modules.dep /mnt/initrd/lib/modules/2.4.24/kernel/drivers/net/forcedeth.o OR nvnet.o
8) umount /mnt/initrd
9) use: gzip -9 <initrd filename> to gzip the file and place into appropriate location, such as: /tftpboot/lts

--Lockheed

 

[Lockheed]

In an effort to consolidate the info, I have created a webpage where you can download the kernel and the initrd images.

http://www.geocities.com/nf2ltsp/

I may end up removing the nvnet initrd image since it may not be "legal".

I will also edit all the info I posted so far and move it to the webpage.

It's a free webpage, so I am not sure what the data transfer limits area. If anyone wants to host the files or mirror them, it would be appreciated.

I have also sent the information along to the LTSP guys in the hopes that it will be integrated into the next release of the LTSP kernel so that we will have out of the box support for Nforce2 NICs.

--Lockheed

 

[irisel]

Hi,

I have got to boot the ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe. Now I am solving a problem detecting the video card.

My experience is in www.irisel.com/~jmgomez/IT/diskless, now in spanish, I will translate it shortly.

I have used Etherboot ROM from ROM-o-matic.com and LTSP package so I didn't compile a kernel for myself.

I "just" had to configure DHCP, NFS, LTSP and that was it.

Not too complicated, just a day or two to get into the mood

Best regards, and good luck !