James wrote:
Ladies and Gents,
I am attempting to install Debian on a Cobalt Raq2. I am booting the
system from another Debian machine using dhcp and the nfsroot package
from here -
http://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/stable/main/installer-mipsel/current/images/cobalt/nfsroot.tar.gz.
When running the installer the system continually looses network
connectivity. After continually bringing the network interface (eth0)
up and down to get all the needed packages, I finally got the system
installed.
Once I got the system booted on Debian-stable, running "Linux
2.4.27-r5k-cobalt", the network continually drops out. There is no
information logged to /var/log/messages, /var/log/kern.log or dmesg.
Searching online I found a few references to others having similar
problems but found no real solutions to the problem. Has anyone else
had this problem? Or found a solution for it?
It's a known problem introduced in 2.4.27-10 which was supposed to
solve another network related problem. The previous 2.4.27-8 works
with a single network interface in use but freezes when using both.
The old kernel (with some security issues!) is available from
http://snapshot.debian.net/archive/2005/03/29/debian/pool/main/k/kernel-patch-2.4.27-mips/kernel-image-2.4.27-r5k-cobalt_2.4.27-8.040815-1_mipsel.deb
A description how to build a 2.4.27 debian kernel with both network
problems hopefully fixed is available from
http://lists.debian.org/debian-mips/2005/07/msg00053.html
I got so far no response about it and can't test it myself because I
have no cobalt hardware.
Thiemo