Re: Problems during Woody install connected to x-surf [was Re: Linux-APUS-user digest, Vol 1 #524 - 2 msgs]

[Andreas <an...@po...>]

Hello Pieter

>> Well, you may think whats the deal, the guy can do
>> that later too, but this one is quite an important bit for me, because I
> have
>> to do installation trough network (connection set up by dhcp, btw. does
> this
>> work at all in a that early state?).
> 
> Sure, i used exactly this type of install...

That's fine!

>> It seems as the kernel wouldn't support my x-surf NIC. But I couldn't
> figure
>> out which kernel version has been used for this installation (ok, I should
> have
>> run dmesg maybe). Is it not possible to use a kernel which supports my
> x-surf?
> 
> IIRC, i used something around the 2.4.9 kernel with my x-surf. I can't
> remember the bootfloppies having any problems with that...

This statement gave me hope to try it too, and, it worked!!!
No problem at all to boot, set up the harddisk and so on.

The only thing which hasn't been very nice: I wasn't able to retrieve my
network information by dhcp! The dhcp requester popped up for about half a
second, and then went away for another requester telling me if I would want to
setup the network manually. So I had to bring up the network with my second
machine, then transfer the network information to the debian install on the
fly. This resulted in a short time having two machines on the network with the
same ip address, but it didn't seem to disturb the traffic.

Afterwards, downloading the packets went as smoothly as the rest of the
installation did.

But back to the dhcp problem: on console 2 (alt+f3) it gave me some
information about contributing to the dhcp xyz project, and then printed the
following two lines:

Feb 17 ... (none) daemon.err dhclient-2.2.x: socket: Address family not
supported by protocol

Feb 17 ... (none) daemon.err dhclient-2.2.x: Make sure to set CONFIG_PACKET=y
and CONFIG_FILTER=y in your kernel configuration!

Checking back with the 2.4.9 config file gave me CONFIG_PACKET=m and
CONFIG_FILTER=y. Well, seems as packet is a module, but the woody install
manual tells me it should definitely by compiled into the kernel to have the
kernel working as a boot-floppy kernel. May this be an idea for future kernel
compilations to support installations over network for users with x-surf?

>> I also tried to boot with a 2.4.6 kernel (which supports x-surf), but
> bootstrap just
>> complained aobut the ELF header (n.b. this kernel worked toghether with
> this
>> bootstrap two weeks ago). Should I have raised stack memory maybe before
>> running bootstrap?
> 
> Don't know, but why not try an even newer kernel while you're at it?

Done. Worked. ;) :)

PS: The first time I've trid the installer it somewhere gave me a syntax
error, a ")" should be missing, but I did not jot down where exactly it gave
me this. I have been loking for a bug report concerning this but couldn't find
one. Today it did not appear, or I may have overlooked it, because I was quite
nervous about the network installation. I may have a look at it the next time!

PPS: What about security during a network installation? Is there any chance to
break into a system actually just installing, because there isn't any root
pasword set so far? Or spoofing the download  files? Or is there simply
nothing where a bad guy could hook in?

Thanks again for all your answers!!

-- 
All the best,
Andi