New/old kernel devices disappearing?
Hi,
could anyone please help a relative newbie desperately trying to escape the
Winborg empire? As soon as I can reliably switch all jobs to analogous
applications under Linux, I'm shifting my friends (and hopefully my office) to
Linux. And preferably Debian, I'm so trying to avoid RedHat...
Machine description:
The machine is an AMD K6-233 with 128MB RAM, ISA (nonPnP) NE2000 compatible
network card, an Ensoniq EAPCI; Winborg on hda1; dLinux2.02 with typically a
kernel 2.0.34 on hdb1, typically out of a boot floppy, no LILO.
The problems are:
* Crucial: Disappearing kernel devices:
Under 2.0.34, I have full NE2000 and PPP. But:
- only 64MB RAM instead of 128
(I know about the >64MB support in 2.0.36)
- no sound support
(the EAPCI emulates SB, MPU401, AdLib, Ensoniq SoundScape.)
(I know about Thomas Sailer's "Linux Driver for the Ensoniq
AudioPCI soundcard page, but a: the drivers aren't there
and b: I'm still too mortal to work out how to include it).
Under 2.0.36, I have the full 128MB RAM. But:
- I lose the NE2000 I had before.
- And I lose PPP too!!
- Still no sound support.
- 'dmesg' gives me "Sound initialisation started Sound
initialisation complete" messages. It doesn't give anything
more than that with respect to sound.
I'm assuming that there must be some problem with the sound card, emulations
and assignments. /proc's pci listing does actually register an EAPCI on IRQ5,
correctly reading the BIOS. But the EAPCI emulates at least four different kinds
of systems on DIFFERENT IRQs and IOs (e.g. IRQ7 not 5). And I don't know how to
tell Linux what to assign where.
I downloaded 2.0.36 from the link on linuxhelp.org, used xconfig, did my make
deps and make cleans and make zdisks. First I tried it with modules and compiled
with make module and make module-installs. When I got nothing, I tried to do it
without module support and link all the features in statically (make dep, clean,
zdisk). Nothin'.
* Much less critically: I must just be extremely obtuse; is there a plainer
introduction to setting up a Canon BJC-4200 than the Printing Howto and the
printcap man?
* Less importantly, I do a clean install, Apache works fine. After a few days,
start up messages indicate "Attempting to start Apache... failed". At first, I
thought it was an installation of Netscape 4 without the deb (i.e. using the
ns-install script). So I did a complete reformat and install (the paranoid
approach to stability issues), then got the deb. Installed Netscape, Apache
stayed up. Worked great for a couple of days. Yesterday morning I boot and
"Apache... failed" again. No repeat NO significant changes in configuration in
between.
Been looking, still too inexperienced and I've run up against the wall of my
own ignorance. Could someone please at least point me in the direction of the
right literature, if not give me the answers outright (which would be REALLY
nice please)?
--
P (Peter "Troff" Petroff)
* part-time IT administrator within the Uniting Church
* IT student at the Queensland University of Technology
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Guess who, Sideshow Cecil?"
"Maris?"
- Bart Simpson and Sideshow Cecil
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