How do I enable the alx ethernet driver on Ubuntu 13.04?

Question

I just upgraded to Ubuntu 13.04 64 bit on my Lenovo IdeaPad laptop and am having trouble getting the Ethernet to work.

The alx driver required for my laptop's AR8161 Gigabit Ethernet controller to work have not been included in previous versions of Ubuntu, so I used to install the the driver using the compat-wireless-pc driver package.

Now Ubuntu 13.04 comes with the alx driver, however it does not appear to be functional. When I plug in an Ethernet cable, it is not detected. I have verified the alx module exists

$ modinfo alx
filename:       /lib/modules/3.8.0-19-generic/kernel/ubuntu/alx/alx.ko
version:        1.2.3
license:        Dual BSD/GPL
description:    Qualcomm Atheros Gigabit Ethernet Driver
author:         Qualcomm Corporation, <[email protected]>
srcversion:     DEB551A4F9D0281F98F5F10
alias:          pci:v00001969d000010A0sv*sd*bc*sc*i*
alias:          pci:v00001969d000010A1sv*sd*bc*sc*i*
alias:          pci:v00001969d00001090sv*sd*bc*sc*i*
alias:          pci:v00001969d00001091sv*sd*bc*sc*i*
depends:        mdio
intree:         Y
vermagic:       3.8.0-19-generic SMP mod_unload modversions 

and is loaded.

$ lsmod | grep alx
alx                    67960  0 
mdio                   13807  1 alx

Any suggestions on how to get my Ethernet up and running?

Solution

I have the same network card on my machine, and was also left without a working internet connection. I was able to get it up and running by downloading the source code for the driver (from its homepage at the Linux Foundation) and compiling it:

wget https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/projects/backports/2013/03/04/compat-drivers-2013-03-04-u.tar.bz2
./scripts/driver-select alx
make
sudo make install

After I loaded the new module (sudo modprobe -r alx && sudo modprobe alx) Connection Manager automatically re-connected.

Comments

[chili555]

Are there any informative messages here? dmesg | grep -e alx -e eth0

[Eric Carvalho]

possible duplicate of How do I install drivers for the Atheros AR8161 Ethernet controller?