Sitat Peter Lister <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> > Any installation disk from a distribution e.g. Red Hat does this. > The > method is simple - just load every available driver in turns until > one > reports that it has found a card of the type it supports. There is > an > automatic way to do this: from the modprobe(8) man page... > > Modprobe has two ways of loading modules. One way (the > probe mode) will try to load a module out of a list > > > (defined by pattern ). Modprobe stops loading as soon as > > > one module loads successfully. This could be used to > > > autoload one Ethernet driver out of a list. > > > > So you could just try an install and see what driver the kit uses. > (NB > this is not the same driver used by Etherboot or rom-o-matic but it > should identify the NIC). The NIC is normally announced on one of > the > virtual consoles when the driver is loaded during a network > install, > or when the system reboots after a disk/CD install. This is a good idea. Some tweaking will have to be done, since the installer does not seem to do the modprobing automagically for ISA NICs. Did you try this already? > > This method works on for any NIC that some driver knows about. You > don't know about any cards for which there are no drivers, but are > you > bothered since you won't be able to use them anyway? No. The list could be made to inlcude only the ones the etherboot provides code for. > > PCI cards are easier as one can probe the bus without a driver > loaded. > > % /sbin/lspci > 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 440BX/ZX - 82443BX/ZX Host > bridge (rev 03) > 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 440BX/ZX - 82443BX/ZX AGP > bridge > (rev 03) > 00:07.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82371AB PIIX4 ISA (rev 02) > 00:07.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82371AB PIIX4 IDE (rev 01) > 00:07.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82371AB PIIX4 USB (rev > 01) > 00:07.3 Bridge: Intel Corporation 82371AB PIIX4 ACPI (rev 02) > 00:0e.0 Ethernet controller: 3Com Corporation 3c905B 100BaseTX > [Cyclone] (rev 30) > 00:13.0 VGA compatible controller: 3Dfx Interactive, Inc.: Unknown > device 0005 (rev 01) > 00:14.0 Multimedia audio controller: Ensoniq: Unknown device 5880 > (rev > 02) Yes. PCI is much easier. There are other packages, like detect and discover that will do this nicely and report what it finds. Some claims are made that ISAs will be found, but I have not had any luck. > > For completeness - there are some more "head-on" methods. First, > take > the covers off and look at the printing on the NIC itself - is there > a > manufacturers logo or an identifier on the chips? This may tell you > enough to search on the manufacturers web page or do a Google > search. For you and me this is probably the best method. However, ideally we are looking for (or to develop) something that a non-technical teacher could use when he gets two dozen recirculated PCs from a well-wishing sponsor. > Power cycle and see what the BIOS startup messages say. If you know > the > MAC address (maybe from the BIOS, printed on the NIC or from > network > traffic) look up the first 3 "OUI" bytes at > <http://standards.ieee.org/ > regauth/oui/> to find the vendor. If this narrows it down, then you > can > exhaustively try every possible rom-o-matic image. This will tell > you > quick enough if there's nothing there. Bribe some of your pupils to > make > some floppies and sit there trying them. We're trying to pick the MAC adresses up from the dhcpd.leases file once it has been able to brodcast packets, and update the various files using that information. However, the trick we're searching for now is to find out what the NIC is and what driver it needs - a method foolproof and simple. If not possible, technical support needs to be given somehow. This could be technically competent parents, pupils or from the local administration. > > Finally, be prepared for the fact that though Linux itself supports > just > about every NIC in existance, Etherboot still doesn't have quite so > many. NICs are fairly cheap, even by the standards of a school > budget, > and second hand ones might even be free if you can find a local > company > throwing out old systems. Yes, that's a good point. We have already seen some NICs that won't come up. Thanks for you comments. -- Mvh Ragnar Wisl�ff ------------------ life is a reach. then you gybe. _____________________________________________________________________ Ltsp-discuss mailing list. To un-subscribe, or change prefs, goto: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ltsp-discuss For additional LTSP help, try #ltsp channel on irc.openprojects.net
