Server Meltdown Part Four - Where The NIC Hates You
It appears from reading various threads over the net that the Linux sky2 driver in conjunction with the Marvell 88E8056 Gigabit ethernet controller results in a steamy pile of poo.
I can confirm that this is indeed the case.
Again following up from my previous posts, the next step in home linux server resurrection was to attempt to install Ubuntu 7.10 ×64 edition on my shiny new machine. This didn’t get very far. A boot from CD ended up in a wedged machine no matter how I tried to run the install.
Hmmm, I think I’ll go back to the trusty Debian distribution. I downloaded the latest stable (Etchy) net install disk. Boot. Joy! It all runs. Except the net card. Lots of kernel errors regarding the ethernet driver followed by a fatal crash.
Suck.
Maybe I’ll try Lenny, the “in test” release.
Same thing.
Tomorrow I think I’ll be buying a vanilla net card for this puppy. Something made by Intel. For now I think I’ll just install Etchy on the machine with the ethernet disabled and let the machine burn in.
Sigh - three days into this and it seems like the box isn’t going to be up and running before my next trip. I thought this was supposed to be easy?
More as it happens…
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I conclude that Marvell = Fail. I have a super cheap think centre at home that I got to run 64 bit hyper-v. everything was fine on the install of windows but it took me 2 days to find the right driver and get it working for the NIC.
Now the only challenge is the machine has to have a keyboard attached to boot...