sarge netinst with PCMCIA ethernet fails to install modules
Hello, I'm trying to use the sarge netinst mini-CD to install Debian on
a laptop that has a PCMCIA cardbus ethernet adaptor. The problem that
I'm having is that while the first stage installer can recognise and
activate the PCMCIA ethernet card, it fails to install the kernel
modules for it, so that after rebooting and loading the new kernel from
the HD, the card is not recognised and the network install cannot
continue.
The base system that gets installed contains the pcmcia-cs package and
the kernel-image-2.4.22-1-386 package (obviously), but NOT the
pcmcia-modules-2.4.22-1-386 package. When the system boots there's a
message about "no such directory /lib/modules/2.4.22-1-386/pcmcia" and
so the PCMCIA service cannot load any of the drivers necessary to use
the ethernet card.
I've tried various incantations of dpkg -i and apt-get to try to get the
pcmcia-modules package installed from the CDROM after the fact, but I
cannot make it work. I was under the impression that the installer
should do this for me, so what do I need to do to make it so?
Here is a brief summary of the steps I follow to install:
- Downloaded and burned the 80MB netinst testing mini-CD
- Boot notebook from CD, hit Enter at boot: prompt (no parameters
specified)
- After the installer loads, and attempts hardware detection, the PCMCIA
ethernet card is NOT detected. The installer reports that there are no
network interfaces detected. Running the "Activate PCMCIA subsystem"
option from the menu does NOT detect the card, nor do either of the
"Detect hardware" options on the menu.
Curiously, I found that by trial and error the only way to get the card
detected is to choose the "Mount CDROM on /cdrom" option. ONLY after
doing this is the card detected, from which point the installer
continues as usual. I don't know why this is and it was a bit
frustrating to determine this by trial and error. I thought that
"activate PCMCIA system" would have been all that I needed to do.
The laptop is a Thinkpad 770, the card is a 3com 3CCFE575CT Cardbus
10/100 ethernet adaptor.
Thanks,
Brian
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