Missing interfaces/drivers

Rocky Linux Tech Help
1

Hi all,

I installed RL8 (Xfce) during the weekend. So far so good. There are a few bugs and annoyances I’ll need to work out (later), but my main issue is - there’s no internet. No interfaces. So, after spending some time searching… There are no drivers - and I better say, that works.

For th Wi-Fi, I need iwl3945, which I found in dnf and installed, but it seem like it doesn’t load or getting picked up. modprobe says it’s not in the xxxx dir. Read an article/guide/wiki that said iwlwifi could/should work as an replacement. Modprobe loads it, but doesn’t seem to pick it up.

The one for ethernet i e100.

Any ideas?

I was thinking, maybe install another/newer kernel? Think I read somewhere the old(er) drivers are removed. Found a couple of guides that upgraded the kernel from “ElRepo”. That was one of the thing I wanted to ask here - if that is an ok place to get stuff from. So, when reading the start here-post, I was glad to see there was a lot of ElRepo talk in there. Maybe I should upgrade.

Also saw the FAQ-page on drivers, and looked att the DeviceIDs-page. I can see one of the drivers, but not the other one.

$ lspci -nn | grep -i net
01:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG [Golan] Network Connection [8086:4222] (rev 02)
07:08.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Intel Corporation PRO/100 VE Network Connection [8086:1092] (rev 02)

1092 is in there, but not 4222. I see that CentOS have a page on that Wi-Fi driver, so maybe that’s the way to go - using ElRepo for that one? But, it wasn’t in the DeviceIDs list?

Anyway… Looking further - I found this page, which led/linked to the driver page: …/intel/iwlegacy/3945.c.

If I have to go that way. What do I need? (software, etc).

Unless you have som good ideas. :slight_smile:

/* Maybe the driber can’t be installed on thiis kernel, and I need to upgrade. 6.1 would be nice, whith the new nativ exfat support - but, anything that work would do fine. */

Sorry if it got a little long.

Would appreciate any ideas and info.

· Eric

2

Your easiest solution may be to use ELRepo’s kernel-ml or kernel-lt.

If you’d rather stay with the distro kernel, you can make use of kmod packages from ELRepo. For the PRO/100 device, kmod-e100 should support it. However there is no kmod for the PRO/Wireless 3945ABG device. You may want to file an RFE (request for enhancement) through My View - ELRepo Bugs .

Please note the the CentOS wireless page you reference is outdated and/or incorrect.

1 Like
3

toracat,

Thanks for the reply. :+1: Yes, it’s prob a good idea to get a new kernel anyway. The guide I saw they did it on RL8/9 was this one.

Thanks, I’ll do that.

Yes, I suppose it is. I guess most of the pages on iwl3945 are quite “un-uptodate”.

· Eric

4

Sorry, I was mistaken. The DeviceID page is missing the info for kmod-iwlegacy. This kmod actually supports [8086:4222].

5

Yes, I just saw that in the tracker.

Perhaps there should be an entry in the DeviceIDs page about those 2, something like:

## iwlegacy.ko
pci 8086:4222 kmod-iwlegacy
pci ????:???? kmod-iwlegacy

I also saw there’s a wiki page on ElRepo, for kmod-iwlegacy. Maybe that one should be updated as well?

Thanks @toracat for all the help and info!


I opted for the kernel upgrade, but if anyone need/wants to install the drivers (maybe facing the same problem), it’s something like:

$ sudo dnf upgrade --refresh
$ sudo rpm --import https://www.elrepo.org/RPM-GPG-KEY-elrepo.org
$ sudo dnf install -y https://www.elrepo.org/elrepo-release-8.el8.elrepo.noarch.rpm
$ sudo dnf --enablerepo=elrepo install -y kmod-{e100,iwlegacy}

If that helps you saving some time. :slight_smile:

1 Like
6

Awesome. I have one comment regarding the “How to install kernel 6.1” article you quoted. You don’t want to install kernel-ml-headers. Not only you don’t need it but it could cause a conflict if you had already installed kernel-headers.

The command to install kernel-ml is:

dnf --enablerepo=elrepo-kernel install kernel-ml

It will pull in kernel-ml-core and kernel-ml-modules as dependencies.

1 Like
7

Aah… Thanks for the heads-up! :+1:

8

I have updated the DeviceIDs page.

Where did you see a wiki page for kmod-iwlegacy?

9

Aah, that was fast. :slight_smile:

The link was was in the kmod…-link:

Maybe I should’ve made the “wiki page” a link instad.

When I saw it on the tracker, I made a search, and found this page: https://rhel.pkgs.org/8/elrepo-x86_64/kmod-iwlegacy-0.0-8.el8_7.elrepo.x86_64.rpm.html

Towards the bottom of the page there’s an “Info” box, with links:

Name URL
Repository Homepage https://elrepo.org/
Package Homepage https://elrepo.org/tiki/kmod-iwlegacy
Issue Tracker My View - ELRepo Bugs
10

About the headers (potential) conflict… Thought I read on the ElRepo page, the naming convention with “-ml” appended, was to avoid conflicts.


$ dnf --enablerepo=elrepo-kernel repoquery --requires kernel-ml
kernel-ml-core-uname-r = 6.1.3-1.el8.elrepo.x86_64
kernel-ml-modules-uname-r = 6.1.3-1.el8.elrepo.x86_64

And the “modules-extra”? Don’t need it? …or what’s in that one?

11

Updated… :slight_smile: Haven’t checked any bootlogs or anything (yet), but it booted fine, and reports back the new version.

$ sudo inxi -Sz
System:
  Kernel: 6.1.3-1.el8.elrepo.x86_64 arch: x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: Xfce
    v: 4.16.0 Distro: Rocky Linux release 8.7 (Green Obsidian)

Most importantly… The interfaces are there. Yaaay! :+1:

$ nmcli device status
DEVICE  TYPE      STATE        CONNECTION
usb0    ethernet  connected    Wired connection 1
eth0    ethernet  connected    Ethernet
wlan0   wifi      unavailable  --
lo      loopback  unmanaged    --

So, I can remove my tetherd phone later, which I’m using now.

// Thanks again!

· Eric

12

If you click on the link, you’d see that the page does not exist. I suppose it was there at some point but has been removed.

13

Appending the name with “-ml” was done so kernel-ml can be installed in parallel with the regular kernel. However the -header package was set up to conflict so only one of them is allowed to be installed. Generally, you don’t need to install kernel-ml-headers. Quoting from the Tip section of the kernel-ml wiki page:

There is no need to install the kernel-ml-headers package. It is only necessary if you intend to rebuild glibc and, thus, the entire operating system. If there is a need to have the kernel headers installed, you should use the current distributed kernel-headers package as that is related to the current version of glibc.

1 Like
14

The “modules-extra” package contains a small number of rather uncommon modules. So most people would not need this package.

Congratulations! Glad to hear kernel 6.1 was successfully installed and is working for you.

15

Thanks for the clarifiactions on the headers, etc.


Thank you! Yes, it works fine. Just need to figure out the Wi-Fi. It doesn’t want to connct. But, I’ll get there, eventually.

/* Have another issue I need to address first (the language have suddenly changed. Happed before the kernel upd). Might have to create another topic for that one if I can’t figure it out. */

· Eric