Re: Why does Ubuntu have all the ideas?
On Sat, 26 Aug 2006 21:29:37 -0500, John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> said:
> On Sat, Aug 26, 2006 at 01:19:47PM -0600, Hubert Chan wrote:
>> On Sat, 26 Aug 2006 15:26:12 +0000 (UTC), "Sam Morris"
>> <sam@robots.org.uk> said:
[...]
>> > How do other long-lived distributions handle this problem? How does
>> > one install RHEL 4 on such a machine?
>>
>> By downloading pre-compiled kernel modules (usually from the hardware
>> vendor, or from another vendor that ships the same hardware).
> How do you get that on the install CD-ROM?
You don't. (Sorry, I probably should have included this in my original
message.)
The RHEL 4 (and similar distributions) installer at some point asks you
if you want to load an external module. You stick in a specially
formatted floppy, tell the installer to load the module from the floppy,
and then it loads the module and detects your hardware.
(The exact details are sketchy -- the only time I did it was several
months ago, in the middle of installing a whole bunch of new machines,
so I don't remember all the details. But that's the basic idea.)
(Note: I'm not the administrator for those machines. Otherwise, they'd
be running some flavour of Debian.)
FWIW, the Windows installer does a similar thing, as well.
--
Hubert Chan - email & Jabber: hubert@uhoreg.ca - http://www.uhoreg.ca/
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