Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Netgear GA311 (Realtek 8169) and USRP 2

[Felipe Gil Castiñeira]

Hi Matt,

I followed your instructions and I continued having problems with the
connection: find_usrp2 did not found the USRP2, and surprisingly the "ip
-s link show" command showed 0 packets sent or received. After resetting
the Ethernet connection (removing and inserting the module) I could
detect the USRP2 for a while.

This lead me to discover that the problem was with NetworkManager in my
Ubuntu 8.10 distribution.  Disabling the NetworkManager (for example
disabling the nm-applet in the Gnome session) or changing the setup
seems to solve the problem:

    * In /etc/network/interfaces set the Gigabit Ethernet as "manual".
          o auto eth2
            iface eth2 inet manual
    * In /etc/NetworkManager/nm-system-settings.conf tell networkmanager
      to not touch the configured interfaces in /etc/network/interfaces
          o [ifupdown]
            managed=false

Thank you for your help!
    Felipe.

Matt Ettus wrote:
>
> OK, it looks like we have some sort of problem with the RTL8169.  Can
> you guys run the following program in its own window
>
>        while ip -s link show dev eth0 | more -c && sleep 1 ; do : ;done
>
> That will show you stats on the ethernet device.  Then run find_usrps
> and see how many packets, drops, and errors see what happens.  Do the
> same thing for when you run usrp2_siggen.
>
> Also, please run ifconfig and send the output.
>
> Thanks,
> Matt
>
>
> Felipe Gil Castiñeira wrote:
>> Hi Brett,
>>
>> I had the same (bad) experience with a RTL-8169 card and USRP2:
>> approximately 75% of the time "find_usrps" can not detect the USRP2 (the
>> same for usrp2_fft.py).
>>
>> I can not confirm the problem (just now I don't have another card with a
>> different chipset), but I suspect it is related to the RTL-8169 device.
>>
>> Best,
>>     Felipe.
>>
>> Brett L. Trotter wrote:
>>  
>>> The purpose of this email is to ask if anyone (out of the relatively
>>> few
>>> USRP2 users) had happened to bump into this card and had similar
>>> difficulty as well as to determine if this is repeatable on other
>>> systems and thus warn others away from the headache I've encountered.
>>>
>>> I've been successful with the Attansic Technology Corp. L1 on an AMD
>>> board I have, but a Netgear GA311 produces odd results. find_usrps
>>> works, but usrp2_siggen fails to identify the daughterboard. I believe
>>> the GA311 is at fault. I was originally on Fedora Core 7 but
>>> upgraded to
>>> 10 after the initial problems.
>>>
>>> Please let me know if you have any experience with this card in
>>> general,
>>> or even better, with this card and a USRP2. I'm anxious to resolve the
>>> issue (or return the card).
>>>
>>>
>>> Thank you in advance.
>>>
>>> -Brett
>>>       
>>
>>
>>