Re: netboot.img & Davicomm integrated ethernet

["Leonard den Ottolander" <leonardjo hetnet nl>]

		Hello Jason!

Maybe you can edit the netboot disk. Proceed as follows:
1) Write the bootdisk with dd or rawrite
2) Mount the bootdisk under /mnt/floppy (-t ext2)
3) Copy the file initrd.img from the bootdisk to /work/initrd.gz (this is a 
compressed / ram filesystem used at boot).
4) Decompress the initrd (gzip -d initrd.gz)
5) Mount the initrd under /mnt/loop0 with the loopback device(mount -o loop -t 
ext2 /work/initrd /mnt/loop0). You have now mounted the file as a filesystem 
which you can edit. Do only the necessary editing on the destination file 
system. You will have to recompress it later. Fool around on a test copy.
 Here comes the hard part. I think it should be possible to tweak in the 
ethernet driver you need, but I don't know what parameters you should use, so 
this discussion is somewhat theoretical.
 In the directory modules on the ramdisk image you have to edit all the files.

6) module-info
 You have to clone one of the module sections, something like
dmfe
	eth
	"Davicom 9102"
 I am not sure if you had to set something for io, irq and mem, but somebody 
else should be able to tell you that. Have a look at the wd section at the end 
of the file.

7) modules.cgz
 The modules.cgz is a compressed archive that contains the modules. In this 
archive you'll copy the dmfe.o (and the drivers it depends on).
a) cp /mnt/loop0/modules.cgz /work/modules.cpio.gz
b) gzip -d /work/modules.cpio.gz
c) cpio -i -F /work/modules.cpio --list > mod-list
d) cpio -i -F /work/modules.cpio -d
 This creates the file mod-list and the directory 2.2.14-5.0BOOT or alike. 
This directory contains the driver files.
e) copy dmfe.o  to 2.2.14-5.0BOOT(, as well as other needed drivers)
f) You must add the added drivers to mod-list
Reconstruct the archive:
g) cpio -o < mod-list > modules.cpio
h) gzip -9 modules.cpio
 Copy the gzipped archive back to the ram disk image:
i) cp /work/modules.cpio.gz /mnt/loop0/modules.cgz

8) modules.dep
 Does the dmfe driver depends on (an)other driver(s)? If so you have to insert 
a section (line) for each dependency, like
dmfe: somedriver
without the .o.

9) pcitable
 This file is the one I am least sure about. It looks as if you have to enter 
an entry for your ethernet "card" here, containing two id#s, the first one 
being the manufacturer and the second one the card identifier. After these the 
module identifier in braces (eg "dmfe") and an identifier string in braces.
 You will have to find out which id's specify your "card".

 After editing these files you can unmount the ram disk image:
10) umount /mnt/loop0
 and gzip it:
11) gzip -9 initrd
 Finally, you copy the compressed ram disk image back to the floppy disk.
12) cp /work/initrd.gz /mnt/floppy/initrd.img

 If it fits on the floppy, you should now be able to use this bootdisk and 
choose your newly added driver. The network card might even be autoprobed (or 
the probe might hang the system ;) ).

 As you can understand, I can't give you a 100% guarantee that this works, but 
I have done similair things that worked out fine. Let me know if this works 
for you!

				Bye,

				Leonard.

> I have a new 599 Motherboard with an integrated Davicom 9102 ethernet
> interface. I would like to install using netboot.img but I can not figure out
> how to load the device driver for the ethernet card. I used a seperate machine
> to build the driver dmfe.c and now have a .o file that I should be able to do
> an insmod on and presto; the FTP install can just run off and do it's thing.
> 
> Unfortunetly I have no idea (nor have the archives helped me) figure out
> how to load this driver. I understand that RedHat linux has the concept of a
> driver disk which I can use by going into the expert mode of setup but just
> having the .o file does not seem to be enough. It would appear that I somehow
> need to turn this loadable module into some kind of "driver archive" or
> conform to some type of special layout.
> 
> I'm stuck... Your help would be greatly appreciated.