Re: Etch status..?

[cga2000 <cga2000@optonline.net>]

On Mon, Nov 27, 2006 at 08:50:24PM EST, Douglas Tutty wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 27, 2006 at 05:13:56PM -0500, cga2000 wrote:
> > On Sun, Nov 26, 2006 at 05:36:39PM EST, Douglas Tutty wrote:

[..]

> > I normally use apt-get or command-line aptitude.
> 
> Part of your difficulty could be using two different (apt-get and
> aptitude) package managers.  They each have different logic on
> dependancies (aptitude is the new standard) and keep their information
> in different places so they can't "compare notes".  

Yeah .. that was pretty stupid of me ..

As if I didn't have enough on my plate already.

So I printed the output of a

# history | grep apt

I did the etch upgrade following the sarge install using apt-get and
then installed half a dozen apps, Xorg, and the 2.6.8 and 2.6.17
kernels using aptitude.

Sounds like I'll have to start over and stick to one or the other.

The result of mixing the two can only be "unpredictable" since whoever
wrote those two different interfaces would never have bothered about
the implications of this silly behavior.

All the same .. and I may be wrong about this but my gut feeling is that
this is not related to my problems with networking.  After all most of
the live CD's that I tried that run recent kernels also failed to
configure the network.

> You should figure out the aptitude full-screen.  It really is quite
> easy.  Tell aptitude (via the options menu) to automatically fix
> dependancies but not install recommends.

Is there a tutorial anywhere?  And I mean _tutorial_ that shows you how
to use it .. not one of those cryptic "manuals" ..

[.. completely removing hotplug ]

dpkg -P hotplug removed the init.d/hotplug* scripts.

Both the 2.4.27 and 2.6.8 kernels still boot OK and configure eth0
correctly.

[.. validating contents of /etc/modules ]

I have to look into the approach you recommend.  

[ .. retrieving oops messages before kernel starts logging ..]

Found that the oops was caused by another PC card (slot 1) that connects
an external CD burner.  Inserting this card after booting the 2.6.17
kernel also results in the same kernel oops and a system freeze.  The
nice thing is that this time the messages are logged.

> However, if you have 2.6.8 working, why worry about earlier kernels?

Stuff like my pcmcia/scsi CD burner .. DRI ..  1400x1050 framebuffer
console .. and possibly other stuff that work with the 2.4 kernel.. 

So if any of these turns out to be a problem area with 2.6 kernels, I
can boot the 2.4 kernel and run a backup ..  play tuxracer .. etc.

[..]

Here's basically what's happening with 2.6.17 at this point:

1. The kernel oops goes away if I remove the CD burner's PC card.
2. Everything re the pcmcia NIC looks good (lsmod, pccardctl ..)
3. Except that eth0 is not configured
4. Also pccardctl (status or ident..?) marks the slot as [unbound]

So it sounds like there's a table with an entry for each pcmcia slot
somewhere in the kernel and that for some reason it does not get
populated.

or at least that the entry for slot 0 where my NIC lives doesn't have
the name of the driver.

My impression at this point is that I probably need to configure udev ..
I read something about a udev resources database .. but I have  no clue
how to go about doing that and the docs I have found are cryptic and
only (briefly) discuss the creation of this database when installing
udev from source.

I was thinking of installing a custom 2.6.17 or 2.6.18 from source over
the weekend .. paying special attention to all pcmcia-related aspects.

Could be that the vanilla 2.6 etch kernel does not support my
particular pcmcia config.

Another option ..  now that I can at least boot this 2.6.17 kernel and
retrieve logs and the output of lsmod .. lspcmcia .. pccardctl .. lspci
..  etc.  might be to post to the pcmcia mailing list .. see if anyone
can figure out from my output what I  need to do to get this to work.

To be honest .. I am surprised that I couldn't find more in Google
regarding pcmcia difficulties with recent kernels .. Maybe because PC
cards NICs are a lot less popular these day and most recent laptops
have a proper PCI network card .. ??

Sorry about being so verbose -- most of the above is speculation -- and
thank you for your comments.

Thanks

cga