Re: PCMCI 8139 NIC & Hotplug

[Derek Broughton <dbroughton@netcom.ca>]

From: "Joel HATSCH" <debian-ml@joel-hatsch.net>
>
> just to get this into the archives...
>
> problem : NIC is not detected with woody 3.0r1's bf24 default kernel,
> had to recompile kernel to get the 8139too.o module to modprobe using
> hotplug (and not cardmgr).
>
> solution : in fact, kernel HAS TO be recompiled, default kernel has the
> 8139too driver compiled into the kernel, thus no possibility to modprobe
> it after having initialised PCMCIA.

This doesn't sound right.  Sure, you can't modprobe a compiled-in module, but
usually modprobe is just done to ensure that the module IS available, and if
it's already there you'll get some error messages (normally sent to /dev/null)
but you don't fail a script based on the results of the modprobe.  ifup should
still work.

My point, then, is that the problem would not be with compiling the module into
the kernel, but with hotplug.  However, hotplug shouldn't strictly be necessary
_either_.  Hotplug just calls ifup - so the question is (and now probably
neither of us could answer it :-)) could you bring up the interface with ifup or
ifconfig?

> I don't understand why this was done, it actually prevented me from
> network installing woody as my NIC would never have been detected !