15 thoughts on - CentOS7 Net Install On HP A1710N Fails

• what sort of NIC does it have on it?

• Can you install the live CD on it?

• ok, googled, and found…

  Athlon 64 X2 4200+ 2.2Ghz
  Geforce 6150LE chipset
  Asus A8M2N-LA motherboard
  1-4GB DDR2 ram
  SATA
  Ethernet: 100baseT – Marvell 88EC031

• At 02:26 PM 11/7/2014, you wrote:

  Good spotting…

  Is this device known to be “not supported” in C7? Recall that it worked just fine in a C6 Net-Install. If not supported, is there any option but to get an add-on card with a modern NIC.

  David

• We would need more information to answer that. The vendor:device PCI ID
  pairing would be a good place to start. If you happen to know which kernel module (driver) the device used under CentOS 6, that would be helpful too.

• At 02:59 PM 11/8/2014, you wrote:

  Yikes. I could install Windoze and get that information. How does one obtain that? Currently, the machine has no operating system on it, so if C6 can get it, I’d need to do a complete install. That takes time but little brain power. And then, I’ve no idea how to obtain that information in C6.

  David

• The command to display the vendor:device PCI ID is:

  lspci -nn | grep -i net

  I suggest you get CentOS 6 Live media and boot from there.

  Akemi

• That was just for the ethernet device. Remove the grep part and you’ll get the IDs for other hardware.

  Akemi

• At 03:23 PM 11/8/2014, you wrote:

  Using the LiveCD for CentOS 7, the network was “Unknown”. The results of the lscpi command gave

  00:14.0 Bridge [0680]: Nvidia Corporation MCP51 Ethernet Controller
  [10DE:0269] (Revision A3)

  However, we could not “define” the ethernet controller and make it usable.

  David

• According to the ID pairing, your network device uses the forcedeth driver ( see http://elrepo.org/tiki/DeviceIDs ). Unfortunately this is one of the many drivers removed from CentOS 7.

  Once the OS is installed (by use of local media, for example), you can install ELRepo’s kmod-forcedeth package for el7. But tough luck with the netinstall of the OS.

  Akemi

• Thank you for the information.

  You need the kmod-forcedeth driver from elrepo.org for that device:

  http://elrepo.org/linux/elrepo/el7/x86_64/RPMS/kmod-forcedeth-0.64-1.el7.elrepo.x86_64.rpm

  Download and install the driver after installing CentOS 7.

  Hope that helps.

• Folks:

  This conversation was trying to get CentOS 7 installed on a machine with a NIC that got de-supported in EL7.

  Following the advice to do as follows:
  – Install (via CD) the “minimal” ISO
  – add the RPM of kmod-forcedeth-0.64-1.el7.elrepo.x86_64.rpm from a USB stick, as obtained from ELPRO (install went without serious complaint)
  I’m at a loss of what to do next, namely
  – How do I tell CentOS that there’s a NIC, and how do I configure it?

  PS: There is no GUI, and the command line display is very tiny.

  Guidance would be appreciated.

  David

• 1. Get list of interfaces that are up:
  ip l l

  Then load the module:
  modprobe forcedeth

  Then check interface status again to see which has come up (if any):
  ip l l

  If no interface has come up, post the error on screen (if any), then check the logs to see if any errors are reported and post them back here as well.

  (not sure if on C7 immediately initiates a DHCP request when the interface comes up)

  Check if interface has an IP address:
  ip a l

  If no IP address, then request one via DHCP:
  dhclient

  Browse the net… Done!

  ============================
  If no DHCP server on network, then set one manually as indicated below:
  ip a a 1.1.1.1/24

  then bring it up:
  ip l set up

  then add a default route:
  ip r a 0/0 via

  Browse the net… Done!

  Cheers, ak.

• Anthony K’s suggestions will not be persistent (won’t last a shutdown/reboot). But they will be enough to regain network access and SSH
  into the system from the comfort of your workstation/laptop.

  @Anthony, Thanks for sharing your examples. I’ve gotten spoiled by using the “ip addr show” shortcut of “ip a s”. So much so that I try to do “ip l s” for “ip link show”, which doesn’t work. Given the error message: Not enough information: “dev” argument is required. I figure ip tools thinks I’m attempting to set something on the interface. Anyhow, your “ip l l” shortcut appears (see my manpage comment below) to evaluate to “ip link list”, which is awesome! Shortcuts for the win.

  On a CentOS 6.6 system per the ip manpage, it seems that “list” is undocumented for link and addr.

  (Certainly correct me if I’m wrong … I did find a TLDP page with an example of “ip link list”, so it’s known by some.)

• Thanks Mike.

  I use Ubuntu on the laptop and in the manpage for the ip command it has the following:

  COMMAND
  …*As a rule, it is possible to add,**
  ** delete and **show (or list )**objects, but some objects do not allow all**
  ** of these operations or have some additional commands.* …

  Seems to be vaguely documented – I can see how *(or list )* part can be misleading as you might think they are just saying that show
  _will_list_ and not necessary that *list* can be substituted for *show*
  – it’s all in the wording!

  Oddly, the man page for ip (iproute-2.6.18-13.el5) on CentOS 5 is way more comprehensive (it has way more examples on where list can be used)
  than that on Ubuntu 14.04.1 with iproute-3.12.0-2! But then, Ubuntu has a man page for each ip object:

  $ man ip-
  ip-address ip-monitor ip-ntable ip-tunnel ip-addrlabel ip-mroute ip-route ip-xfrm ip-l2tp ip-neighbour ip-rule ip-link ip-netconf ip-tcp_metrics ip-maddress ip-netns ip-token

  Cheers, ak.