Missing ethernet card
I have just completed an install onto a Samsung P28 laptop, which comes with
a BCM5705M ethernet port. I was using the business card pre-R2 installer.
I was using expert26 as I was installing unstable.
The installer did not find this ethernet port, and thus I was unable to
proceed until I had manually loaded the Broadcom module. Perhaps this
chip could be added to the list that is automatically recognised.
By the way, when it failed to find the ethernet chip, I went across to
another virtual console and tried to issue the lspci command in order
to identify which chip this laptop used (as usual it was not listed anywhere
on the box or - that I could find - on the web). But the lspci command is
not available on the console. Would it be a good idea to include it?
There is much more of a problem with PCI chips than with USB or PCMCIA
ones, as those items can always (assuming you have one) be attached to
another machine in order to find the chip. With PCI chips in desktops and
servers you have the option to read the labels on the chips (albeit with
a magnifying glass), but on a laptop this option is not open to you as
the box is generally very difficult to open.
The way that I used to find it was to use Knoppix. It recognised the
chip and loaded the driver.
As an alternative perhaps for the future when the system can not
recognise the chip perhaps the output from lspci should be shown
on the installer virtual console.
The other thing that I noticed which caused me a small problem is
the behaviour with respect to mdetect and read-edid. Both of these
are by default installed, but if you do not then install the
x-windows-system during the install they get removed without
asking the user. Personally I do prefer to do the apt-get installs
myself, and when I did install x-windows-system I had to reinstall
mdetect and read-edid. I can see the logic of removing these if
they are not needed, but should the user (who has effectively
said they are going to do this manually) not be asked?
For the record, all the other bits and pieces (at least the basic ones)
were all correctly recognised and installed.
David
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