Stuff…

Installing Ubuntu on a new Dell R410 works, however, the network interfaces are not detected.  It appears the network interfaces included in the Dell R410 are Broadcom BCM5716’s.

Apparently the bnx2 driver in included in Ubuntu 8.10 and later, however, no backported driver has been provided as yet.

A process for getting the interfaces working would be to install the BCM drivers manually:

• Download the latest driver from the Broadcom site: http://www.broadcom.com/support/ethernet_nic/netxtremeii.php In this case the file is: linux-1.9.20b_1.50.13.zipPut it on a USB stick, insert the stick into the Dell R410 and “dmesg” should show the device it’s been recognised as.
• In this case we mounted the USB stick with: mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt
• Copied the file to /root/files
• On the system run:
  apt-cdrom add build_essential
  apt-cdrom add linux_headers_$(uname -r)
  apt-cdrom add make
  apt-cdrom add unzip

  or make sure /etc/apt/source.list has:
  deb cdrom:[Ubuntu-Server 8.04.3 _Hardy Heron_ - Release amd64 (20090709)]/ hardy main restricted

• Install with:
  apt-get install build_essential
  apt-get install linux_headers_$(uname -r)
  apt-get install make
  apt-get install unzip
• CD into /root/files and unzip the file:
  unzip linux-1.9.20b_1.50.13.zip
• CD into Server/Linux/Driver and read the INSTALL.TXT file
• Then, it should be simply a case of running make; make install
• Hopefully the module compile and installed without problems.  It worked fine for me on Ubuntu 8.04.3.  Reboot.
• Login and try and configure eth0… ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.1
• Run: mii-tool
• Or look at the dmesg output:
  root@dell_r410:~# dmesg | grep Broad
  [   96.497864] Broadcom NetXtreme II Gigabit Ethernet Driver bnx2 v1.9.20b (July 9, 2009)
  [   96.499234] eth0: Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM5716 1000Base-T (C0) PCI Express found at mem da000000, IRQ 36, node addr 00:26:b9:xx:xx:xx
  [   96.500547] eth1: Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM5716 1000Base-T (C0) PCI Express found at mem dc000000, IRQ 48, node addr 00:26:b9:xx:xx:xy

Now, you should be able to configure your /etc/network/interfaces file for next reboot.