Is there a FreeBSD brain trust around?

[14tokihorn]

New Install, new user (for informal professional development).

Can't network, even with what I thought was decent planning/hardware research... I even mailed the author of the Drivers' Man page. Will be real surprised if I'm answered.


Problemo

 

[CraftyWidget]

I'm not a FreeBSD guru having more experience with Linux and, to a lesser extent, OpenBSD. But this line from you other forum post stood out:

media:Ethernet autoselect (100BaseTX <half-duplex> )

If you switch is manageable, you might want to check the switch port settings. If the switch is not a managed switch, you might try swapping the cable.

Good luck.

 

[Bob Wills]

What make/model is your motherboard? I assume that the onboard NIC chipset is an Nvidia nForce, is that correct? Do you have a USB port that you could use to try a different NIC/driver to check your sanity before you go too far? If you want to see if the interface is actually seeing any packets other than your own, check out the tcpdump command (this should be run as root or with sudo).

 

[Bob Wills]

If you have another switch or router around, it wouldn't hurt to try plugging your NIC into that device and test.

You may also want to try disabling onboard devices (e.g., USB, firewire, bluetooth, etc) on the off chance that your interrupts are conflicted.

 

[14tokihorn]

Thanks B Wills -

yes, its an Nividia onboard MCP. (Nforce -check). During researching this hardware, there's a 2 yr. old post over at Asus specific to Video out and Unix systems. Someone went so far as to explain that how the Bios handles the ACPI (I maybe inacurate on the exact relationship) is due to a Windows compilation, as opposed to the 'real ACPI' standards... I was really ready to blame my whole thing on ASus. (Performed Bios upgrade anyway... just because I can.... the posts were over my head)

Sanity check this afternoon - just plugged directly into the my home ISPs' plug, bypassing the Cisco Gateway, and I'm on.
- Yeah, found TCPdump this A.noon as well, but had interruptions. I may just dig out the old hub and WireShark my way around with the laptop.

Oh, and I finally found something that makes sense of the cryptic 'error 0X6004' - thats most likely an Ethernet frame-type reference, not that its accurate - as far as I know, its just a 'report'

Any thoughts on why a (simple, to me) Cisco interface is causing grief.

At least now I can start with the Ports/ packages.