Ali Aboosaidi » Debian

Debian: Squeeze cannot load Broadcom LAN drivers bnx2/bnx2-mips-09-5.0.0.j3.fw

Ali — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 14:48:53 +0000

You may run into a window asking you to provide the bnx2/bnx2-mips-09-5.0.0.j3.fw package to continue installation. Don’t freak out, visit this link and download the deb package from a mirror. Copy the package to a USB drive AND DO NOT EXTRACT THE .FW FILES, COPY THE DEB PACKAGE ONLY. INSTALL WILL EXTRACT WHAT IT NEEDS ACCORDINGLY and then click continue.

Debian: dmesg output contains “Error: Driver ‘pcspkr’ is already registered, aborting…”

Ali — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 05:07:47 +0000

Here is what’s transpiring: the boot sequence attempts to load two different drivers for the integrated PC speaker. To solve the problem install alsa-base package: aptitude install alsa-base And then execute the following command: echo blacklist snd-pcsp >> /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base-blacklist Related posts: Debian: NIC bonding (teaming) 32/64 bit OS Windows: Cannot team Broadcom NetXtreme adapters. Please [...] Related posts:

Debian: open-iscsi, use iSCSI initiator to connect to a SAN

Ali — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 20:41:03 +0000

It is actually quite easy as long as your kernel is 2.6.16 or newer. Debian supports fibre channel out of the box, and for iSCSI you only need to install the open-iscsi package (you can easily taylor this to your distro):

aptitude install open-iscsi

Once the package is installed restart the initiator:

/etc/init.d/open-iscsi restart

To find out the indentifier name take a look at initiatorname.iscsi file:

cat /etc/iscsi/initiatorname.iscsi

You can find the initiator identifier towards the bottom of the file… mine is InitiatorName=iqn.1993-08.org.debian:01:61ddbbf82a70. Once you found the name you should be able to discover the target with the following command (my LeftHandNetworks iSCSI SAN IP is 192.168.1.70):

iscsiadm -m discovery -t sendtargets -p 192.168.1.70

Make a note of the record ID (mine is iqn.2003-10.com.lefthandnetworks:sancrp:3139:debian) and connect to it using the following command:

iscsiadm --mode node --targetname iqn.2003-10.com.lefthandnetworks:sancrp:3139:debian --portal 192.168.1.70:3260 --login

Once you initiated the command your iSCSI target will become visible to the OS as an SCSI disk (/dev/sda). You can now partition, format and then mount the LUN just like any other storage device. Add the target to your fstab and it should be auto-mounted everytime your system boots.

nano /etc/fstab

and add:

/dev/sda1   /iscsi   ext3   _netdev   0   0

To have the LUN mounted to /iscsi directory. It didn’t work that well in my case… fstab mounts devices early during startup and before iscsi init, and OS couldn’t find the target to mount. I ended up scripting the initiator and mount… created a file “initiscsi” in /etc/init.d directory and added the following lines:

iscsiadm --mode node --targetname iqn.2003-10.com.lefthandnetworks:sancrp:3139:debian --portal 192.168.1.70:3260 --login
sleep 5
mount -t ext3 /dev/sda1 /iscsi

I’m sure there is a proper way to have the session initiated before the mount, but I didn’t care enough to figure it out. Init and mount script will do just fine in my case since my LUN is just a storage device.

That sleep command is to make sure the LUN is visible to the OS before it’s mounted. I added the script to my startup sequence after making it executable:

chmod +x initiscsi
update-rc.d initiscsi defaults

This is of course for Debian startup.

If you are using CHAP you will need to edit your iscsid.conf file:

nano /etc/iscsi/iscsid.conf

and update it with correct authentication info:

node.startup = automatic
node.session.auth.username = username
node.session.auth.password = password
discovery.sendtargets.auth.username = username
discovery.sendtargets.auth.password = password

Save and close the file, then initiate discovery.

Added by Tim Rogers (thanks!):

If you wish to do this properly, you must change the boot order so that the disks are available when the iscsiadm daemon starts. To do this

mv /etc/rcS.d/S25open-iscsi /etc/rcS.d/S88open-iscsi

Check the etc/rcsS.d file first to check when open-iscsi is initiated. May have to change the command to relate to your particular setup. Then there is no need to set up the initiscsi file as described above if this is done.

Debian: Etch x64 and VMware Server Cannot connect to host x.x.x.x: No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it.

Debian: Lenny cannot load Broadcom NIC drivers, asking for firmware bnx2-06-4.0.5.fw or bnx2-09-4.0.5.fw during install

Ali — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:58:22 +0000

If you have a Dell server, dump it, or keep reading

Well… to me it sounds like some copyright crap Broadcom is pulling, or perhaps Debian is trying to be more compliant with restricted drivers. Three ways I can think of to work around this:

Download the deb package from http://packages.debian.org/etch/firmware-bnx2, copy it to a flash drive and insert when prompted during installation. You don’t have to mount anything… install process will automatically find and load the driver. Do not unpack the .deb package, copy it to your USB drive without any modifications. OS will access the file and extract what it needs accordingly.
Install an old or supported NIC (Intel?) and proceed with installation. Once it’s done install the deb package and restart networking.
Install without a NIC, then download and copy the file to a flash drive or CD, mount and install. Just make sure you’re not using Debian NetInst CD!

One of the readers suggested that I should also post a link to the page where different versions of the driver can be downloaded http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&keywords=bnx2.

Updated Feb 18th 2010 by Mark (comment reply):

To the people struggling with BCM5716: Even the latest Lenny 5.0.4 stable installer (with kernel 2.6.26-2 rev 21lenny3) doesn’t yet have the PCI IDs required to load the drivers. Here is some useful info:

I’ve just spent the last 2 days working out how to roll my own Debian installer image with a patched kernel. All this work just to get some tiny changes into bnx2.ko and preseed the firmware

I’ve uploaded working Debian Lenny netinstall images:

MegaUpload Links:
amd64: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=8O5D782S
i386: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=3B9W1MHP

RapidShare Links:
amd64: http://rapidshare.com/files/359005652/debian-lenny-5.04-netinst-amd64-bcm5716.tar.bz2.html
i386: http://rapidshare.com/files/359005127/debian-lenny-5.04-netinst-i386-bcm5716.tar.bz2.html

Note: For anybody just looking for an install image containing the bnx2 firmware, this is for you too. Well, it works for me – YMMV.

btw, the next point release (5.0.5) of Lenny will work without any of these problems.”

Debian: Upgrade Etch to Lenny, and error message “There is no public key available for the following key IDs: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx”

Ali — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 03:33:19 +0000

It’s pretty easy to upgrade your Etch to Lenny. Open your repo list and replace all references to “etch” with “lenny”. To edit your sources.list:

nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Then update your repositories:

aptitude update

and proceed to upgrade:

aptitude dist-upgrade

I ran into an error when I was updating my repositories: “There is no public key available for the following key IDs: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx”. To fix that error:

gpg --recv-key --keyserver wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
gpg --export xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx | apt-key add -

Replace xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx with the key you see in the error message and run aptitude update again.