[Server-devel] XS 0.5.1 RC - Last round of testing...

[Sameer Verma]

On Thu, Feb 12, 2009 at 11:30 PM, Sameer Verma <sverma at sfsu.edu> wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 10:37 PM, Sameer Verma <sverma at sfsu.edu> wrote:
>> On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 8:42 PM, Martin Langhoff
>> <martin.langhoff at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Thu, Feb 12, 2009 at 2:41 PM, Sameer Verma <sverma at sfsu.edu> wrote:
>>>> was with eth0 not showing up. It looks like I am the victim of the
>>>> dreaded Realtek 8139 bug. It worked in XS 0.4 but in 0.5.1 it refuses
>>>> to show up.
>>>
>>> Strange, but it does look like a driver problem.
>>>
>>> The links you provide show various different problems with that NIC.
>>> In some cases, irqpoll in the kernel boot line fixes, in others some
>>> fiddling with ethtool was needed...
>>>
>>> It'll be good to know which of the fixes helps you :-)
>>
>> appending irqpoll has fixed that problem. Now, I've hit another bug.
>> This is yum broken with _sha256 as stated here.
>> http://fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=193507
>>
>> I'm going to try the workaround.
>>
>>>
>>> BTW, if you upgraded from XS-0.4, it might be a good idea to rm
>>> /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules
>>
>> No, this was a clean install. I'm running the server for testing only,
>> so I can afford to wipe it clean.
>>
>> Sameer
>> --
>> Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
>> Associate Professor of Information Systems
>> San Francisco State University
>> San Francisco CA 94132 USA
>> http://verma.sfsu.edu/
>> http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
>>
>
>
> So, after mucking around last night and today, I wiped my XS box and
> reformatted it to remove ALL traces of 0.4  I have a clean 0.5.1
> install on it. md5sum of the ISO is c0fde10b93cab3cb1a3bc3a42ceb5408
>
> I've circumvented the realtek 8139 problem by appending irqpoll in
> grub.conf That seems to work, although I have to bring up eth0
> manually and issuing dhcient eth0
>
> I still hit the bug of _sha256 as mentioned here:
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=454179
>
> Note that I am not upgrading anything. Its a clean install. I believe
> the appropriate word for this is: AARGH!
>
> I wish Fedora had  LTS or "Stable" branch (it does...kinda...in
> RHEL...are we allowed to say CentOS here?) but that's another thread
> and another rant. It does remind me of why I don't run anything on
> Fedora anymore.
>
> Anyway, this is getting in the way. Is anyone seeing this too? If so,
> then its a significant barrier for 0.5.1
>
> Suggestions?
>
> Sameer
> --
> Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
> Associate Professor of Information Systems
> San Francisco State University
> San Francisco CA 94132 USA
> http://verma.sfsu.edu/
> http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
>

Some more snooping around. I took the same CD and installed it on a
desktop with one NIC. This time everything went as per plan.
Everything!

I have a XS-0.5.1 running in my office with one AA plugged into it and
working as advertised. It works great, except that I don't want to lug
desktops around to OLPC-SF meetings :-) We have a local school showing
up tomorrow. I'm glad that i am able to get 0.5.1 running, so I can
recommend it to them. Thanks for all the hard labor, Martin! I'll buy
you a few beers if/when you come to SF for moodlemoot.

I *strongly* suspect that the Fujitsu P2120 laptop problems as stated
in this thread are related to Realtek 8139 driver not working properly
during installation. Maybe I should append irqpoll to the grub lines
*before* the install CD boots and see how that goes.

Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/