Hi, I just got a laptop client running and I'd like to share my experiences and also get some help.
The laptop in question is an old NEC with a 400MHz PentiumII, 256MB RAM. It originally had a Xircom REM56g-100 pcmcia network card. More about this card later. Since pcmcia cards are not supported by etherboot I was forced to use a modified version of the procedure at http://www.k12ltsp.org/mediawiki/index.php/Technical:Booting:Laptop (hereafter referred to as the 'original instructions'). I began by installing a server using the K12ltsp distro. Then I logged in and became root and unpacked the initramfs: su mkdir initrd cd initrd cat /tftpboot/lts/pxe/initramfs.gz | gunzip | cpio -id # the location of the initramfs differs from the original instructions Then I added the modules needed to support my pcmcia card cp -r /opt/ltsp/i386/lib/modules/2.6.17.8-ltsp-1/kernel/drivers/pcmcia/ lib/modules/2.6.17.8-ltsp-1/kernel/drivers/ cp -r /opt/ltsp/i386/lib/modules/2.6.17.8-ltsp-1/kernel/drivers/net/pcmcia/ lib/modules/2.6.17.8-ltsp-1/kernel/drivers/net/ Note: the second cp was not in the original instructions. I added that because I think I need the xirc2ps_cs driver for my card. Then I added all the lines in /opt/ltsp/i386/lib/modules/2.6.17.8-ltsp-1/modules.dep that pertained to /opt/ltsp/i386/lib/modules/2.6.17.8-ltsp-1/kernel/drivers/pcmcia/ and /opt/ltsp/i386/lib/modules/2.6.17.8-ltsp-1/kernel/drivers/net/pcmcia/ to the modules.dep in the unpacked initramfs. Then I edited init and added the following: . . . [ "${SLEEP}" -gt 0 ] && sleep ${SLEEP} echo "modprobing yenta_socket ..." # Add this line modprobe yenta_socket # Add this line sleep 3 # Add this line echo "modprobing xirc2ps_cs ..." # Add this line (not in original instructions) modprobe xirc2ps_cs # Add this line (not in original instructions) sleep 3 # Add this line (not in original instructions) if [ -z "${NIC}" ]; then . . . Then I packed up the new initramfs: find ./ | cpio -H newc -o | gzip > ../myinitrd.gz I also grabbed the original kernel from /tftpboot/lts/pxe/vmlinuz.ltsp Now that I had the kernel and the rebuilt initramfs it was time to move them to the new harddrive on the laptop. I did this using the following procedure: 0) I put the initramfs and the kernel on a local webserver accessible from the laptop. 1) installing a command line debian system from floppy. Why did I install Debian? I just wanted a working GRUB, and Debian still has a floppy based installer. This laptop has a dead cd drive. 2) The original plan was to boot up Debian and then move the initramfs and kernel from the webserver. Then edit grub. But Debian would not use my pcmcia card. Oh well, I stuck tomsrtbt in the floppy drive and rebooted. 3) Using tomsrtbt I mounted the harddrive and edited the menu.lst file for grub: mkdir /laptop mount -t ext3 /dev/hda1 /laptop cd /laptop/boot/grup vi menu.lst # add a new section in menu.lst for the new kernel and initramfs. Use the original as the model. wget http://<my webserver>/myinitrd.gz wget http://<my webserver>/vmlinuz 4) Then I rebooted. 5) Hurray. The kernel booted. The system loaded the kernel and then tried to start the network card.... 6) Oh no. The boot died when it couldn't load the driver for my xircom card. The dhcp request never happened. 7) Oh well. I'll stick a handy Intel 10/100 ePro card in the laptop and reboot. 8) Success! The laptop booted and gave me a LTSP login screen. I logged in. Firefox is working. So is OpenOffice. And probably most other things. Now... Does anyone have an idea as to how I can get the Xircom REM56g-100 card to work? During boot I saw a "unknown symbols" message when the init script tried to modprobe the xirc2ps_cs driver. According to google the xirc2ps_cs is supposed to work with my XircomREM56g100. BTW, did I mention I have 30 of these laptops, each with a Xircom REM56g100? I really need to get this to work. Maybe I should install Linux on one of the other laptops and see how Linux gets the xircom to work? I figure some poking around in the logs and maybe a little work with lsmod will yield some answers. I'm sure I can find at least one laptop with a good cdrom. One final point: my Xircom card is not in the /etc/niclist. Do I need to set $NIC in init? Thanks, Jeff LePage [EMAIL PROTECTED] ____________________________________________________________________________________ Bored stiff? Loosen up... Download and play hundreds of games for free on Yahoo! 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