bootfloppy and 1Gbps NICs

[Bruce Edge]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Frank Lenaerts [mailto:lenaerts.frank at pandora.be]
> Sent: Monday, August 25, 2003 7:45 AM
> To: linux-fai at Uni-Koeln.DE
> Subject: bootfloppy and 1Gbps NICs
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Currently, lots of mainboards/systems have an onboard 1Gbps NIC. Linux
> kernel 2.4.18 however (woody), does not have support for e.g. Intel's
> e1000 NIC. 
> 
> Therefore, I am wondering how I can create a custom FAI bootfloppy to
> include support for this card or did somebody already create such a
> floppy? It seems that the bootfloppy generated by make-fai-bootfloppy
> almost only contains a vmlinuz kernel image (with in kernel support
> for several NICs I suppose). 
> 

It's worse than that.
I looked at booting from this NIC once, and at the time (2.4.18) did not
have a driver for it.
You had to use intel's driver that was only buildable as a module.
So, you would need to build a boot floppy with an initrd containing this
driver.

For us, this wasn't our long term NIC, so I just plugged in a supported
card and never actually did it.

-Bruce