Can't connect to ethernet with Atheros AR8161 on Ubuntu 12.04.2

Question

I have read most of the answers that seem relevant to this, but I thinlk my issue is different and I haven't found the answer.

I have a new HP Pavilion HPE h8-1360t computer. It has Windows 7 and Ubuntu 12.04.2 in a dual boot configuration. It has a Ralink corp. RT5390 Wireless 802.11n wifi controller and an Atheros Communications Inc. AR8161 ethernet controller. I have two Lynksys WRT160N routers connected to different WANs and using DHCP for LAN client conmnections.

In Windows I can connect to the routers via WiFi and via wired ethernet. In Ubuntu, I can connect fine via WiFi, but ethernet connections 'try' for a while and then give 'wired network disconnected'.

It appears I have the required driver and sudo modprobe alx executes without error, but I can never establish a wired ethernet connection.

$ lspci | grep ^0[34]
03:00.0 Network controller: Ralink corp. RT5390 Wireless 802.11n 1T/1R PCIe
04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR8161 Gigabit Ethernet (rev 08)


$ sudo lshw -C network
  *-network               
       description: Wireless interface
       product: RT5390 Wireless 802.11n 1T/1R PCIe
       vendor: Ralink corp.
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0
       logical name: wlan0
       version: 00
       serial: 20:10:7a:89:4d:ef
       width: 32 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
       configuration: broadcast=yes driver=rt2800pci driverversion=3.5.0-27-generic firmware=0.34 ip=192.168.1.158 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bgn
       resources: irq:16 memory:f7200000-f720ffff
  *-network
       description: Ethernet interface
       product: AR8161 Gigabit Ethernet
       vendor: Atheros Communications Inc.
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:04:00.0
       logical name: eth0
       version: 08
       serial: 70:54:d2:97:05:11
       size: 100Mbit/s
       capacity: 1Gbit/s
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm pciexpress msi msix bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt-fd autonegotiation
       configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=alx driverversion=1.2.3 duplex=full firmware=N/A latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes port=twisted pair speed=100Mbit/s
       resources: irq:17 memory:f7100000-f713ffff ioport:d000(size=128)


$ ifconfig
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 70:54:d2:97:05:11  
          inet6 addr: fe80::7254:d2ff:fe97:511/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:306 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:1617 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:174710 (174.7 KB)  TX bytes:335752 (335.7 KB)
          Interrupt:17 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:1401 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:1401 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:112404 (112.4 KB)  TX bytes:112404 (112.4 KB)

wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 20:10:7a:89:4d:ef  
          inet addr:192.168.1.158  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::2210:7aff:fe89:4def/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:7621 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:6083 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:3181961 (3.1 MB)  TX bytes:911510 (911.5 KB)

It seems that eth0 is up and that there is some communication, but I still get the 'wired network disconnected' alerts every minute or so and don't ever get connected.

Also it seems that if this were some DHCP protocol issue, the WiFi connection to the same router wouldn't work either.

I am lost. Can anyone help?

Solution

In network-manager on tab Ethernet set MTU size to 8192. https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=70761

Comments

[douggro]

Have you tried disabling the IPv6 protocol on eth0? It seems that is the only connection that is active on Ethernet and there is no IPv4 address listed.

[Mark Sapiro]

I tried disabling the IPv6 protocol on eth0. It makes no difference. I think the reason there is no ipv4 address is that this is obtained via DHCP from the router and that's what's not working. You can see from ifconfig that packets are being exchanged, but a connection never gets established

[douggro]

I just want to be clear: are you connecting to the same router with both connections (wifi and Ethernet), or a different router with each connection?

[Mark Sapiro]

Say the wired connection is R1 and the other is R2. I can connect to both R1 and R2 via WiFi although not simultaneously of course.

[douggro]

You have R1 and R2; you connect to R1 via wifi - do you then try connecting to R1 via Ethernet, or to R2 via Ethernet? And if it is to R2 via Ethernet, is R2 operating with a different DHCP address range than R1?

[Mark Sapiro]

The wired ethernet is connected to R1. I can see both R1 and R2 as available WiFi networks and connect to either. R1 assigns DHCP IP addresses 192.168.1.100 through 149 and R2 assigns 192.168.1.150 through 199. Further, both routers assign fixed addresses to predefined MAC addresses so that R1 always assigns 192.168.1.100 to the ethernet MAC 70:54:d2:97:05:11, R1 assigns 192.168.1.106 to the WiFi MAC 20:10:7A:89:4D:EF and R2 assigns 192.168.1.158 to the WiFi MAC 20:10:7A:89:4D:EF.

[douggro]

You never really want to connect both interfaces to the same router as it might create some loopback problems. I would also hesitate at having both routers issuing the same DHCP IP ranges, unless you have them differentiated with netmasks. If you disable the wifi connection, will it connect via Ethernet to R1?

[Mark Sapiro]

The two routers do not use the same DHCP IP ranges. R1 assigns DHCP IP addresses 192.168.1.100 through 149 and R2 assigns 192.168.1.150 through 199. I don't want to connect both interfaces to the same router. I just want the ethernet interface to work. I'm only noting that the WiFi interface can connect to this router. No, disabling the WiFi interface does not allow the Ethernet connection to work.

[douggro]

I would try disabling the router-assigned IP function and switch to using a fixed IP address for the eth0 connection.

[Mark Sapiro]

I had actually seen the second of those posts before and tried some of those suggestions with no change. Based on answer 1 in the first post, I now tried installing linux-backports-modules-cw-3.6-3.5.0-27-generic and rebooting, but thast didn't help either. None of this is surprising, as I already had in my system /lib/modules/3.5.0-27-generic/kernel/ubuntu/alx/alx.ko and /lib/modules/3.5.0-28-generic/kernel/ubuntu/alx/alx.ko. I tried running a packet capture ...

[Mark Sapiro]

on the ethernet port and I find I am sending periodic DHCP Discover requests that look good to me, but I'm not seeing any DHCP Offer response. I don't know if the router is not answering (seems unlikely) or if the packets from the router are being lost.

[douggro]

I'd still bet that it's a driver issue. I'd keep searching here and on the Web for info regarding the Atheros driver until the hardware gets current support in the kernel.

[Xin]

I have the same network card and the same issue. This worked like a charm (despite that it is quite a hack)!