Re: Non-newbie question: Catch-22 ??

[ABrady <xunil kc rr com>]

On Thu, 6 Jun 2002 09:16:54 -0700
"Steve Hayter" <steve hayter riverdalians com> wrote:

> Greetings,
> 
> Far from a newbie question here.  I've been a RedHat administrator for
> years, but I've got a real catch-22 on my hands at the moment (never
> encountered this before).
> 
> Trying to do a notebook installation of enigma, but the unit has no CD
> drive.  It's an HP Omnibook 3000CTX.  I have TWO NICs, and a real
> problem on my hands.  Both NICs are Linksys EtherFast 10/100 devices,
> one PCMCIA the other USB.
> 
> bootnet.img doesn't have PCMCIA devices listed (obviously), but it
> also doesn't appear to support USB adapters.
> 
> pcmcia.img + dd boots up, recognizes the card, but because I'm not
> using"bootnet" I can't select NFS/FTP/HTTP installation modes...
> 
> So, to recap, I can "bootnet" and not see the NICs, or I can "pcmcia"
> and see the PC card, but have no option to do a network-based
> installation.
> 
> Anyone know of any USB drivers, or some clever work-around?  Not
> really into the idea of going out an buying a $100+ CD drive for a
> notebook that I got for the same price...
> 
> Am I missing something?

Maybe you can make both, boot with the bootnet, read the driver from the
pcmcia and move along. Never tried it, but an idea.

Or, make the pcmcia floppy, copy the driver from there to another
floppy, boot with the bootnet, insert the floppy to read the driver,
then move on. Again, never tried it. Don't see any reason it wouldn't
work.

AFAIK the installers usually ask for a driver disk. At that point you
should be able to supply something that can get the NIC recognized.

-- 
Death is just Nature's way of saying, "Hey! You're not alive anymore!"