Re: initrd kernels (>=2.4.22) and woody

[dann frazier <dannf@hp.com>]

A couple of other important points I missed (one of which has a certain
admin cursing my name atm).  Both of these are relevant if you're upgrading
any debian ia64 system to the new initrd kernels.

#1) In >= 2.4.22 standard ia64 kernels, your network drivers are now all
modules.  As such, they will no longer be automatically loaded when the kernel
boots.  You will need to see that they get loaded.

My favorite way of doing this is to create an /etc/modutils/0netdev file.
In this file, I make aliases for my devices:

Example:
-------------------
alias eth0 tg3
alias eth1 e1000
-------------------

Then run update-modules, which will regenerate your modules.conf.
When the networking initscript ifup's an interface, the corresponding module
will be automagically loaded.

How do you know which drivers correspond to which interfaces?  The loading
of these drivers, and the interfaces they discovered, should be in your
/var/log/kern.log, or from the dmesg command, if you've freshly rebooted.

Another option is to apt-get install discover - if it knows about your nics, it
will try to load the drivers for you in the order it discovers them (but may
not know about all the latest pci ids [1].


#2) note that depmod will print out a bunch of errors when you install
the kernel image deb.  This appears to be a bug in modutils, but it doesn't
seem to harm anything.  The installation will ask you if you'd like to abort,
but go ahead and continue.

There are other reasons it may ask you to abort (improperly edited configs,
etc) - don't ignore those.

[1] Discover is used by the new debian-installer, so it'd be a good thing to
    file bugs if it doesn't work for you.

-- 
---------------------------
dann frazier
Hewlett-Packard
Linux and Open Source Lab
dannf@hp.com
(970) 898-0800