On Wed, Nov 28, 2007 at 02:01:31PM -0700, Joseph L. Casale wrote:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andrew Sackville-West [mailto:andrew@farwestbilliards.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2007 12:18 PM
> To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
> Subject: Re: Install Question
>
> On Tue, Nov 27, 2007 at 02:33:18PM -0700, Joseph L. Casale wrote:
> > If a controller manufacturer makes drivers for your OS, but the OS
doesn't have them natively, how does one install Debian on to this
controller as the boot device?
> Invariably this will involve some bit of hackery either in the
> installer itself, or in installing to some other disk and then
> migrating over.
> That was what I was kind of after. So it's not straight forward then
> :) I assume a kernel w/ drivers compiled in is going to be faster
> than one without and having a module loaded? How does one choose a
> new kernel (say one I compiled in a vm on esx for the sake of ease
> with my new driver) during a fresh install?
please turn on line-wrapping in your MUA.
Straightforwardness is of course relative.
Speed is only an issue at boot time. Once the module is loaded and
hardware is detected then there would be no difference in performance
between a statically compiled kernel driver or a loaded module, ISTM.
We're getting into specifics now without enough specific information,
but for installation purposes, I would probably compile the module on
another machine, against the right headers, and then insert that
module into the initrd image during install. You can switch over to a
VT and do quite a lot inside the installer. I would think (haven't
tried it) that you could edit the conf files for the initrd builder
and get that module loaded (off a floppy or something) into it. Of
course you need the module to see the disk during install too, don't
you?
Again there are many ways to do this stuff, and the specifics of the
situation matters. It's not something I've had to do, so I can't
really address it in more than this general way...
A
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