Patrick,
why everybody now has to use Ubuntu? Ubuntu is a nice and colorfull
ditsribution, but Ubuntu is new and Ubuntu still has many bugs. That's
normal for a one year old project but it's the reality?? Try debian,
Fedora, Geento or whatever for the beginning. Later you can change if
you like.
Another problem: I can use 'any' used network-card, but If for example
if somebody before has changed the settings for a 3Com-Card from 100
MBit to 10MB, using the 3Com-Software for that, for Linux in the future
it will be a 10MBit-Card. Linux don't know about the content of the
eeprom of these card. To fix this, you need the 3Com-software.
In your special case, you should first change the card for testing. It's
possible, there is a problem with the driver, a hardware problem with
the pci-bus, an IRQ Problem or whatever. It's possible too, there is a
problem with your network-card. Ether a hardware-problem or a problem
wirh the eeprom-settings. But I don't think, this is a LTSP problem. In
your case for example, what if somebody has changed the clock-rate for
the pci-bus from 66 to 75. Many mainboard have a jumper for this. The
risk is, your system will not be stable anymore. Sometimes it will work,
sometimes not!
Really guys, the LTSP project is great and the software-package is good,
but even for this you can not use 'any' old low cost hardware.
And there is another problem: Nearly all cards I know with a bootprom,
the pxe-loader-software - the one inside the eeprom - is buggy. Low cost
card, Intel or 3Com, it's all the same. I don't use bootproms anymore, I
prefer Etherdisk instead.
Try it out, change the hardware and be patient .....
Guenther
Davao City, Philippines, Planet Earth, 28.0 °C
Patrick Keohane wrote:
Hi,
This is probably going to turn out to be a real newby request but here
goes ...
I am having trouble getting a Dell GX620 (ultra small unit) to boot via
PXE.
I am using a Dell GX620 Desktop machine loaded with Fedora Core 4 as the
LTSP Server and can boot an old Dell LS Laptop from it.
I understand that the Dell GX620 range contains the same basic hardware
and therefore assume that the GX620 Desktop and Ultra Small unit contain
the same on-board network card which is the Broadcom 57xx card.
When I try to boot the GX6200 Ultra Small unit it picks up the
pxelinux.0 and loads the kernel image (bzImage-2.6.9-ltsp-3) and the
initrd (initrd-2.6.9-ltsp-3.gz) messages scroll past until the process
stops with the messages:
ERROR! Could not automatically detect the network card.
PCI cards should be detected automatically ...
Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!
What have I tried:
Well,
1) I have checked what type of network card mod the kernel on the Server
is using and lsmod returns tg3 which I think is the correct driver for
the Broadcom 57xx.
2) I have a copy of the Ubuntu 5.10 install CD and have copied the
initrd and kernel images from it and configured the server to boot the
client from that. It worked!, and starts the install process. By
pressing Ctrl + Alt + F2 on the client (GX620 Ultra Small unit) I get a
shell and have checked what network card mod the kernel is using on the
client (lsmod returns tg3).
I have taken copies of both the Ubuntu 5.10 initrd and the initrd-2.6.9-
ltsp-3.gz unzipped them both and mounted them to check differences. As I
am sure you all know there are some, but the ones that seemed to be
relevant are around the modules.pcimap, modules.alias, and niclist
(there is not one in /etc in the Ubuntu initrd). The tg3.ko files are of
different sizes.
I have tried to bring the modules.pcimap and modules.alias files into
the same state and have copied the Ubuntu tg3.ko file over to the
initrd-2.6.9-ltsp-3 initrd. This was all done in a large number of steps
retesting between mods.
3) I have tried to download and compile both the linux-2.6.12 and
linux-2.6.13 kernels (with and without the Broadcom driver down loaded
from their website) but still get the same problem.
nb: I do get a couple of messages when using the buildk script which I
downloaded as part of the ltsp_initrd_kit. These are:
zipping initrd
running mknbi-linux
mknbi-linux: invalid option "--output"
ls: /usr/src/ltsp_initrd_kit/vmlinuz-2.6.12: No such file or directory
4) I have tried adding the "option option-129 "NIC=tg3";" line to the
dhcpd.conf file but to no joy.
Can anyone give me any pointers?
Best regards,
Patrick
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