Does anyone have a reliable procedure for doing an install over the network
on an Inspiron 3000/3200 with a PCMCIA ethernet card? [The 3000 and 3200
appear to have the same TI PCI 1131 PCMCIA controller, so what works for one
should apply to both. I have a 3200.]
There seems to be a general consensus that PCMCIA on these machines doesn't
configure well by default and requires tinkering after installation.
(See for example the pages on i3x00s linked from the Linux For Laptops page.)
But of course, for an ftp install one needs to get it working first.
I've waded through lots of stuff, including lots of archived mail from this
mailing list, and I've tried lots of things on my 3200 with a Linksys combo
(10BaseT/2) PCMCIA card. Here's what I've found out:
Booting the regular RedHat 5.2 installation boot disk, with PnP OS set to no
in the bios, and with the PCMCIA card in the machine (along with the MPEG-2
decoder card that came with the DVD-ROM in my case), when you tell it you do
want PCMCIA services for your installation it hangs when it gets to the
screen that says "starting the PCMCIA services". I couldn't make the computer
switch to any different virtual console (in particular 2 which is where
someone said the installation console messages go) at this point or at any
point before it during the installation. Someone suggested booting with the
cards popped out. I tried this both leaving them out up to this hang and
popping them back in as soon as the boot was complete. Same result as above
in both cases.
The behavior was indistinguishable whether I used "expert" mode or not.
If I change PnP OS to yes in the bios before booting, then it never asks
about needing PCMCIA support and after selecting ftp as the install method it
eventually asks which ethernet driver to use but only gives a list of
non-PCMCIA cards. So I can't get past that point. I tried both NE2000 option
since my Linksys is supposedly NE2000 compatible, but neither worked. It just
said it couldn't find the card.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Yung Shing Gene) a while back posted a pointer to a
patched boot disk that supposedly would recognize the PCMCIA correctly.
It's at ftp://ftp.cz3.nus.edu.sg/redhat/patches/, but it didn't work for me.
I get the same hang in the same place.
I also tried the patch instructions for the supplemental disk which can be
found at http://www.ps.uci.edu/~tomba/inspiron/pcmcia.txt, but after
successfully modifying the pcmcia.cgz file, I get the same hang. I tried from
both boot disks (card physically in at boot).
One person suggested making the ftp install a 2-step process by first ftp'ing
in Win9x all the files necessary for a hard-disk install and then using that
install method. This is an okay idea, but I'm not sure how to conveniently
ftp all the files or exactly what files to ftp, or exactly what configuration
of directories to put them in on the HD.
Okay, after a bit more playing and some helpful e-mails, I the problem is an
IRQ conflict that many people have reported on and fixed successfully, AFTER
finishing the linux install. (See for example
http://members.tripod.com/jeffchiu/linux-i3200.html.) The problem is
described in the PCMCIA howto as an IRQ scanning problem and is solved by
editing /etc/sysconfig/pcmcia and /etc/pcmcia/config.opts.
The problem is that I'm not sure how to make the equivalent changes to the
boot+supplemental disk pair. The supplemental disk doesn't seem to have an
/etc/sysconfig/pcmcia file (even in an archive). There is an
/ect/pcmcia/config.opts in an archive, so I tried to modify the supp disk on
a separate linux machine by mounting it, unarchiving the archive file
(pcmcia.cgz), editing the file to exclude IRQs 3 and 10 (which seem to be the
problematic ones based on peoples experiences and which is consistant with
the fact that I know the controller is 11 and the ethernet card is 9), and
rearchiving all the same files with the edited config.opts. The results in
some error messages about something called insmod or something like that and
I'm thinking they might be some sort of checksumming so my changing the file
was bad. But I don't really know. But this managed to halt the installation
process (in a different way though).
And that's where I stand. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
I have the DVD-ROM drive so a CD install ins't an option, though if the
2-step process of moving the files from CD to HD is easier than ftping them
to the HD, then that might work, but I'd like to be able to do it without the
CDs.
-Karl
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Karl Pfleger [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.stanford.edu/~kpfleger/
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