3.3. Installing from the Network (NFS)

The nice PCMCIA driver package from David Hinds < dhinds@allegro.stanford.edu> optionally includes modified versions of the Slackware boot and root floppies that allow an installation over the network for those who have supported Ethernet PCMCIA adapters.

Since the PD6720 PCMCIA chipset is among the ones supported by David Hinds' drivers, this can be used for the TravelMate. However, I have experienced problems with some versions of those modified boot/root disks due to an IRQ conflict. With the configuration chosen, my 3Com 3C589B PCMCIA Ethernet adapter got assigned IRQ 5 by the driver, conflicting with the sound adapter settings. The resulting symptom is that attempts to mount an installation directory exported from a remote system fail with a timeout.

There are two possible workarounds:

1. Change the Jazz16 sound adapter settings from DOS to use another IRQ (the IRQ is software-selectable). IRQ 3 seems a reasonable choice for those who don't have a PCMCIA adapter that adds a second COM port. This can be done by modifying the:

   DEVICE=c:\jazz\jazz.sys P220 I5 D1 E7 T330 Q2

   line in CONFIG.SYS. The "I5" parameter should be changed to "I3". Note that this new configuration is to become permanent, the "SET BLASTER=..." line in AUTOEXEC.BAT and possibly the driver's settings in Windows have to be changed too.

   I have not tested this workaround myself.

2. Change the PCMCIA driver's setup so that it allocates a free IRQ to the Ethernet adapter. This can be done by adding the corresponding "exclude irq" lines to the /etc/pcmcia/config file, just after:

   # First built-in parallel port 
   exclude irq 7                  
   

   I added the following lines:

   # The following is used by the sound adapter 
   exclude irq 5                                
   # The following is used by the SCSI adapter  
   exclude irq 11                               
   

   Note that irq 3 should not be excluded, else the PCMCIA driver might fail to find a free IRQ.

   This is easily done when one has a Linux system already up and running, but how to do it when in the very restricted environment of the Slackware boot disk? Here are the steps:

   1. Boot from the modified Slackware boot/root disks put together by David Hinds. Login as root as suggested.
   2. When at the shell prompt, mount the root floppy (the "#" characters below are the shell prompts, do not type them):

      # mount /dev/fd0 /var/adm/mount
      

      Disregard the message saying that the file system isn't clean and that a fsck is suggested, if such a message appears.

      Then go to the /var/adm/mount/etc/pcmcia directory:

      # cd /var/adm/mount/etc/pcmcia
      

   3. Type the following:

      # sed 's/exclude irq 3/exclude irq 5/' <config >config.new
      # mv config.new config
      

   4. Unmount the floppy:

      # cd /
      # umount /dev/fd0
      

   5. Reboot the system by typing CTRL-ALT-DEL. Go through the boot and root floppies loading phases again, and check that the network PCMCIA adapter now gets configured to some other IRQ than IRQ 5, most likely IRQ 3. This can be seen in the line similar to the following:

      eth0: 3Com 3c589, port 0x2e0, irq 3, 10baseT port,  00 20 AF C2 A2 CA
      

      that appears during the late stages of boot. Of course, your adapter type and Ethernet MAC address (00 20... above) will vary. The relevant information here is "irq 3".

   6. Go through the normal setup steps, you should now be able to mount the directory containing the Slackware packages from another system through NFS.

HTML document last updated 18 February 1999