On Nov 28, 2015 3:37 PM, "David Christensen" <dpchrist@holgerdanske.com> wrote:
>
> I am continuing to work on the idea of installing Debian on a USB flash drive for use in many machines, primarily for diagnostics, maintenance, repair, backup, archive, imaging, etc..
>
Google "debootstrap usb" - should bring you to enough walk throughs to get you where you want to be.
> As you can see, the machines are somewhat similar.
>
So you're still going to have to play with drivers and the like - I'd make the laptop work first and then move to the desktop.
> I have installed Debian 8 amd64 onto a USB flash drive
You don't explain how you got to this point - installer, remastering the image, rsync a fresh install, debootstrap, multistrap, etc.
> I'm trying to figure out why Ethernet does not work in i72720qm when using the USB flash drive.
>
>
> My theory is that I'm missing software (device driver?) on the USB flash drive that is required to make Ethernet work on i72720qm.
>
Or a shared address (doubt it but)...
> So, I have run 'lsmod' on i72720qm in each of the two configurations. Here is a comparison ('<' indicates module only present when running USB flash drive, '>' indicates module only present when running SSD, no marker indicates module present in both cases):
>
diff -u is much less chatty btw. Or even: diff -U0
> < usb_storage
Needs that to read the thumb drive post grub / pivot root.
> > arc4
> > cifs
> > crc16
> > dns_resolver
> > ecb
> > ext4
> > fuse
> > hid
> > hid_generic
> > hmac
> > jbd2
> > lp
> > mbcache
> > md4
> > nls_utf8
> > pci_stub
> > usbhid
> > vboxdrv
> > vboxnetadp
> > vboxnetflt
> > vboxpci
So I'm no kernel expert, but I see crypto, fs, hid, and vbox. Not exactly sure what pci_stub is but I'd look into that.
> Of the 21 additional modules (arc4 ... vboxpci) that are present when running the SSD, I don't recognize which one(s) might be what I need to get Ethernet working on i72720qm.
>
Maybe it's compiled in the kernel or maybe it's not present in /lib/modules/kernel - lots of reasons something may or may not work as a module. Not enough info to make that call.
I could guess at a default debian kernel build (which I don't know what it includes as a driver off the top) or you could lspci, figure out which driver you need, confirm the file is where it's supposed to be or that debian builds it into the kernel, and go from there.
zcat /boot/config-<version>.gz | grep CONFIG_name