[clug] Debian installer with e1000 driver?

[Peter Barker]

On Tue, 16 Dec 2003, Michael Still wrote:

> so, I have this box. It's got a USB keyboard, and is quite modern, so I
> booted the Debian 3.0r1 installer using the 2.4 kernel, whatever it said
> for a USB keyboard, and the first Debian CD.
>
> There's no driver for the e1000. How do I bootstrap the install with the
> right module? I really want to do this, as I want to install the system
> off the network.

We have e1000's in our servers. But we prepare those by doing an install
using only the first debian CD and then using a "christmastree kernel"
which we burnt to CD to get the network card running. We then update the
sources.list to use the network and do all sorts of fancy stuff.

Doing it during install could be interesting. You could try:
 - burning a replacement "disk1" which used a more modern 2.4 kernel which
does suppoort the e1k
 - find a back-port of the e1000 module to the bf24 kernel and insmod it
early in the installation (burn it to CD or put it on a floppy)
 - temporarily put in an older network card

> Also, without the network driver I got to the reboot step, at which point
> it printed a screen of "01"'s, and stalled. Did it install the 2.4 kernel
> I asked for during the boot phase of the install, or is the problem there
> that the box has a 2.2 kernel on it now?

Smells like the lilo install didn't go well. I think the screenfulls of 01
means it couldn't find its chain file, so basically lilo wasn't run when
it needed to be.

> Mikal

Yours,
-- 
Peter Barker                          |   N    _--_|\ /---- Barham, Vic
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