Arch Linux

wildcat71

Member

Registered: 2015-09-08

Posts: 5

[SOLVED] Pacman - Pacstrap timeouts with Atheros AR8161 and ALX driver

Hi all, I finally decided to write asking for your help/ideas to solve an issue I'm having during the installation.

Introduction
I already installed Arch Linux on my test laptop, an old HP HDX 18.
My connection is very slow. I am using a mobile broadband usb modem connected to a 3G TP-LINK router.
My internet plan is traffic limited with a cap of just 6Gb at 1MB/s of maximum download speed.
Once used all of the 6GB, my speed is capped down to 32KB/s (in effect it never goes over 7KB/s), in 2015 it is a very nice speed, don't you think?
Anyway, also with these limits and some timeouts I could install Arch Linux on the HP laptop.
The installation process on the HP was less painfull than I thought so I decided to install Arch also on my main laptop (Asus N76VZ) where I still have Win7 for my games in dual boot with Fedora on a LVM partition (for Fedora of course).

Installing ArchLinux

So this is what I did:

-Boot>Arch_Linux x86_64
-Ping Google > Ok
-Ping Mirrors >Ok
-I used the same partitions of Fedora, formatting each one of them with:

#mkfs.ext4 /dev/mapper/<my_volume_group_name>-<partition_name>

but leaving the same layout/sizes.

-Mounted all the partitions  and activated the swap as described in the Beginner's Guide.

-Everything fine, checked the result with lsblk and everything is mounted as it should.

Now it comes the issue!

#pacstrap -i /mnt base

-core.db > downloaded with no problems
-extra.db > download timedout at 32% ....remeber this number!
Now comes a spamming list of timeouts for all the mirrors in the mirrorlist.
No one of them can even start the download again.

So ctrl-c to kill the process and here comes the funny part.
Ran again

#pacstrap -i /mnt base

and I got errors since the beginning, like if it was offline.

-Tried to ping google again > nothing!
-Tried to ping 8.8.8.8 > nothing!
-Tried to ping my gateway, the router itself > NOTHING!!!

Just for your information, I was wire connected to the router.
Same configuration used for the installation on the HP laptop that went fine.

Searching Google I found similar problems of timeouts which solution was to disable ipv6 at kernel level before to launch the installer.
Nothing changed with ipv6 disabled too.

I repeated the process above a lot of times, enabling or disabling dhcpcd, using fixed ip, and a lot of other trials but the  extra.db downloading always, always, always stops at 32% and after that I am unable to even ping my router.

I also tried to use XferCommand in pacman.conf, the one with wget and "reset" my network inteface with:

#ip link set enp4s0 down
#ip link set enp4s0 up

because in this way I have a .part file to continue from, seen that after "resetting" the network interface I can ping again and download another 32% more of extra.db running the pacstrap command as before.

Yes! The timeout this time arrive at 64% and again no more connection after that.
So again, reset the interface and run pacstrap . In this way I could download all the databases.

If I don't use XferCommand option there is no way to download the databases because pacstrap and pacman don't resume downloads.

I also tried

pacman -Syy

with and without the XferCommand, nothing changed, same story.

At this point I am not asking help to install Arch Linux, I am asking your help to understand WHY my ethernet interface seems to be turned off, at the point I can't even ping my router, after the timeout happens?
Why, always after about 600KB, I loose connection to the router?

I couldn't find anyting similar on Google.
I searched issues related to the same model and brand of my laptop but I found nothing about lost of connection.

Is this an hardware problem from my side? How can I check it to be sure?
I can reach the router and internet (when my Asus can't) with my other devices (laptops and smartphone) so it is not a lost of connection to the internet itself.
I never had problems like this using Windows and Fedora so I suppose the hardware is ok, but who knows...

Do you have any clue?

I repeat that now my only concern is to understand what is going on with my network, the installation process is not a problem at the moment.

Sorry for the long and confuse post.

Thank you all in advance

Riccardo

Last edited by wildcat71 (2015-09-09 14:41:57)

niceman

Member

Registered: 2015-08-31

Posts: 55

Re: [SOLVED] Pacman - Pacstrap timeouts with Atheros AR8161 and ALX driver

when it stops to ping, can you tell the status of the lights of your routers ? in particular the ADSL light and the Internet light ? 

If those goes off after the timeout then I recommend you check your ISP policy . 

If they're fine then maybe you can try to troubleshoot with netctl.

Also you can try other mirrors or generate them with reflector.

Last edited by niceman (2015-09-09 10:37:11)

wildcat71

Member

Registered: 2015-09-08

Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] Pacman - Pacstrap timeouts with Atheros AR8161 and ALX driver

Thank you niceman for your reply!

First of all, my apologies to all the Community for my first post here. Only after posting the OP, reading it againg, I started to look at the issue I was having from a different point of view and I realized I posted in a wrong section, with a title without any kind of meaning.

I already changed the OP title to better reflect the nature of the issue.

It is not a problem related to the installation but a bug, already forwarded, present in the ALX driver that affect the Atheros AR8161 ethernet card and probably other models.

I found a workaround, not really a solution, as described in this post. 

We just have to modify the mtu with this command:

#ifconfig   enp4s0 mtu 9000

 
enp4s0 is the name of my ethernet interface, use yours instead of that.

I am actually downloading all the base and base-devel packages. No more timeouts.
Probably, with the new kernel the problem will be present again, but at least now I know where to look at.

Again, my apologizes and thanks.

Riccardo

Last edited by wildcat71 (2015-09-09 16:54:24)

niceman

Member

Registered: 2015-08-31

Posts: 55

Re: [SOLVED] Pacman - Pacstrap timeouts with Atheros AR8161 and ALX driver

Good to know that your problem solved.

Funny that I have the same ethernet card but didn't experience timouts with my tp-link(but it's ADSL not 3G anyway ).

wildcat71

Member

Registered: 2015-09-08

Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] Pacman - Pacstrap timeouts with Atheros AR8161 and ALX driver

Just to know, which is your kernel version?

niceman

Member

Registered: 2015-08-31

Posts: 55

Re: [SOLVED] Pacman - Pacstrap timeouts with Atheros AR8161 and ALX driver

Just to know, which is your kernel version?

uname -r
4.1.6-1-ARCH