Debian, floppies and headaches, Oh MY!

[Syngin]

Hey guys,

I got bored on my day off yesterday and initially decided to scrap the RedHat 7.0 install on my one box and install a fresh copy of RH Enigma 7.2. Well... I burn the isos and started installing (repartitioned so I lost all the older stuff) but then ran into install problems. Seems my burner is going screwy and botching burns.

Well, I say to myself, "Self, you don't have anything better to do today so why not give Debian a try?" ;)

Tried their mini iso without luck (again, burner problems) so I decided to go with the floppy install. According to the Debian site, it a small install but they make a big deal of saying apt-get can get the rest after. 'Sounds cool. Shouldn't be a problem' I think to myself.

Well, after wading through setting up the floppy images and then the install (which was pretty cool actually) I get done and realize it didn't detect the nic.

Now this is a big problem since its a barebones install and i NEED the card working to get anything :rolleyes: I also suddenly kick myself for being lazy/spoiled with RedHat and using Gnome to set up my network config. (RedHat 7.0 had no problem at all with this nic btw)

<a href="DEEP BREATH">

Having checked ifconfig, the only interface listed is 'lo'. My question is:

How do I go about setting up this nic manually?

Its a D-Link (sorry, not sure of the model # as I'm currently at work) I spent a couple of hours researching this last night but all instructions seem to reference commands before that I'm not capable of using in this stripped down install. By this I mean that there was always seemed to be a command I had to run BEFORE issuing the ifconfig string. To be honest, I get a little worried at this point that I'll have to recompile the kernel to get this to work and haven't done this ever.

Sorry if this is a newbie-ish question. I AM trying though. :p

Just sort of got tired of using X-Windows as a crutch.

Any help would be immensely appreciated and I apologize for this novel. :D

[FoBoT]

yikes, that is an achilles heal of an ftp/floppy debian install, if your nic isn't supported/recognized with the driver disks, then you are sorta stuck :(

you don't have a different nic you can borrow and try?

i am not sure what you need to do , sorry i am not much real help :(

so anyway, good luck, guess this is mostly a "moral" support / bump post :)

[Syngin]

hehe Thanks FoBot. Actually, I could play musical nics and swap a couple of nics around and see what happens.

I'll let you know how things go.

:)

[The Whizzard]

When you first installed, did you select the module for your NIC? Debian doesn't automaticaly detect NIC's and some other devices during install.

At this point, the first thing you need to know is which module to use. After you know which module to be used, issue a 'modprobe rtl8139'. Relpace 'rtl8139' with the correct module. If you plan on using DHCP to get your IP and other network settings then a simple 'pump' will do that for you. You should now be able to get on the net to finish the install. If after finishing the install, the NIC no longer works, you'll need to add it in your /etc/modules.conf.

[Syngin]

Unfortunately, it never gave me the option. :(

[slacker_x]

In the module loading part of the install, there should be network card modules that you can load. Try and find out what cards you have and people will be able to tell you which module to load.

[TheMuso]

Try and find a list of what network cards are natively supported with kernel 2.2, as Debian is still using 2.2, which is not so good for more modern network cards.

[Syngin]

Hello again,

Well, I managed to get one nic going last night. :D

I had an Aopen card that worked with the one Realtek nic setup in the compile :-)

Apt-get works great and I'm now on the road to getting this system up. Thanks again guys :)

[FoBoT]

w00t! :D

another satisfied customer/debian dude! :)