forcedeth

[Per Foreby]

On Sat, 8 Jul 2006, Holger Levsen wrote:

> On Saturday 08 July 2006 15:22, Per Foreby wrote:
>>>>> Trying to install some new AMD64 computers with NForce chipset, I
>
>> I'm referring to the version in the fai repository:
>
> besides that I don't have control over what ends up there...
>
>>    $ dpkg -s fai-kernels|grep -i version
>>    Version: 1.10.3
>>    $ zgrep FORCEDETH /usr/share/doc/fai-kernels/config-2.6.16.gz
>>    # CONFIG_FORCEDETH is not set
>
> I now guess that you're working with debian for i386 and not amd64, right?

Correct, I don't trust the amd64 version in a production environment until 
December 4 (or whenever etch releases), and besides that, we still have 
some intel boxes, so it's easier to use the same port everywhere.

> Because in the amd64 config it is included, in the i386 config it's not. Will
> fix this in 1.11...

I believe this will be appreciated, I'm probably not the only one running 
i386 on Athlon64 boxes.

> P.S.: this will be really solved when we use standard debian kernels, which is
> my aim to achieve at the upcoming fai developer workshop...

Sounds interesting, but is it really possible when debian compiles almost 
everything av modules, and relies on initrd for booting? But if 
CONFIG_ROOT_NFS is statically linked, maybe you could use an initrd 
image from an nfs share?

But using the stock sarge kernel wouldn't solve my problem, so one should 
of course be able to use any debian kernel package. (Our new computers use 
the NForce 430 chipset, and it't not supported until 2.6.15, so I install
2.6.16 kernel from backports.)

Using standard kernels would also make it impossible to create a boot 
floppy, but it's probably only a matter of time before that would be 
impossible even with a custom kernel. Anyway, I wouldn't miss the boot 
floppy since booting from CD is much faster. And most network cards can 
PXE boot these days - I only use a boot CD on a few old boxes with old 
network cards which don't honour next-server (we don't have the dhcp 
server on the fai server).

/Per