Hi, I am in need of help, and I am hoping someone here will be able to help me with some information -- I am probably missin gthe obvious. We have a RHL 6.2 kickstart setup; it has worked fine so far, but the new batch of systems we got have a network device which identifies itself as 3Com 905C (PCI ID 9200), does not work with the 3c59x driver. Our older systems' network device also identifies itself as PCI device ID 9200, but it works fine with 3c59x driver. Even though both devices offer the same PCI ID, the newer systems' network device does not work with 3c59x driver; it does work with the 3c90x driver, but the latter isn't included on the standard bootnet floppy. No biggie, I figure -- I unzipped and mounted the INITRD, uncompressed modules.cgz, added 3c90x.o file from kernel-BOOT-2.2.14-5.0.i386.rpm, removed some older modules (3c501, 3c503 & 3c505) edited module-info and pcitable, and rolled everything back into INITRD and onto the floppy. Now a system (any system, whether the one that worked with the old kickstart's 3c59x driver or one that requires 3c90x driver) starts booting, gets past the DHCP stage, and bails when trying to get the NFS volume where the kickstart file resides (we distribute the kickstart config file over the network). The same volume can be mounted normally when the system is up in Linux (booted from a SuperRescue 2.0 CD, or booted from HD installation in the case if the older systems). Both older systems and newer ones, when booted with the modified kickstart floppy (the one that ties PCI device 9200 to 3c90x driver instead of 3c59x), produce the same output on the error (3rd) console (with appropriate names blotted out to protect the guilty parties): * probing buses * finished bus probing * found suggestion of 3c90x * found 3c90x device * found devices justProbe is 0 * going to insmod 3c90x.o (path is NULL) * sending DHCP request through device eth0 * nodns is 0 * reverse name lookup failed * ks server: ###.###.###.###:/xxxxx/xxxxx/xxxxx file xxxxx.cfg * going to insmod sunrpc.o (path is NULL) * going to insmod lockd.o (path is NULL) * going to insmod nfs.o (path is NULL) * failed to mount ###.###.###.###:/xxxxx/xxxxx/xxxxx At this point, there is a message box on the primary console indicating that the kickstart config file couldn't be found; if I then proceed with standard netwoprk install and try to get the IP via DHCP, the following lines are added to the error console: * no install method specified for kickstart * 65 keymaps are available * loaded 9 keymap tables * pump told us: SIOCSIFFLAGS: No such device Now I double-checked, and the kernel on my kickstart floppy is identical to the kernel in the kernel-BOOT-2.2.14-5.0.i386.rpm; correspondingly, the 3c90x.o file I put onto the floppy is indeed the one I yanked from that same RPM. It should work, to the best of my knowledge, but it does not. The 3c90x driver obviously gets the DHCP info; the content of the syslog (4th) console indicate that it does see the network, at least temporarily -- it gets the correct info about our DNS and NTP servers over the net, so there is definitely at least some IP negotiations going on. However, something in the network driver just as obviously doesn't work, and I have no idea what it is (the last error entry, about 'SIOCSIFFLAGS', is really weird). I am of course still able to kickstart the older machines from the unmodified kickstart floppy. The difference on the old machines' error log between the modified (3c90x) kickstart and the old, working one, starts after the "nodns" line, when the following line is logged: * reverse name lookup worked After which the kickstart (using 3c59x driver) proceeds normally. So the reverse DNS lookup works with 3c59x driver and fails with the 3c90x driver, but I have no idea why; I do suspect that it's just a symptom of a deeper problem, though. Furthermore, that same older system, when kickstarted normally (with 3c59x driver) and then configured to use 3c90x instead, works without any problems, so the 3c90x driver itself doesn't seem to be the culprit... Can anyone help me? I really have no idea what the problem here is... Many thanks in advance. -- | Victor Danilchenko +----------------------------------------------+ | danilche@xxxxxxxxxxxx | Does Emacs have the buddha nature? | | CSCF | 5-4231 | Why not, it has bloody well everything else! |
