On Wed, 28 Oct 1998, Jerry E. McGoveran wrote: > I have a Debian installation in which the ethernet card driver is > apparently not installed. There were some errors at this stage of > the installation process, but the screen drew and reset to the inst. > menu too fast to read anything. I finished the installation, and > now I need to update the kernel and the drivers. I can't compile a > kernel (downloaded 2.0.35 src) because I don't have gcc. I can't install > the gcc package because I don't have network access in Linux - only under > Win95.A
Gcc is available at sunsite.unc.edu and most of the mirrors. Download it w/ win95 and then use tar to "unpack" it. > My Linux installation has a 2.0.32 kernel with 2.0.34 drivers, and this is > probably why the drivers don't work. I'm using the 2.0.32 kernel because > the 2.0.34 kernel wasn't working with my AHA2842 SCSI adapter. > > Questions: > > 1) Can I get there from here? Yes. > 2) How do I install a package assuming I can get the .deb files onto a > mounted filesystem? Dselect asks for a series of directory pathnames, > and complains when it doesn't find various files and directories within > them. Why not just use the tar.gz files? You do have tar/gz don't you? Also, these are available at sunsite.unc.edu. Use 'make' to configure the kernel. If you have X-Windows, then you can use a really nice GUI. Goto the directory /usr/src/linux and type 'make xconfig;make dep;make clean' _AFTER_ you have installed gcc. The kernel 2.0.35 has an okay version of aic7xxx, you may want to apply the patch. > 3) Is there a direct way to update the kernel and/or drivers without > having to compile a kernel or use dselect? Notice above. > 4) Should I give up on Debian and go buy the RedHat CD and hope for better > results? Jumping out of the pot into the fire w/ RedHat (my opinion). > 5) Why did I want a Linux system in the first place? :/ Linux is a very powerful OS, if you can use UNIX. Your machine is completely under your control w/ most versions of Linux. RedHat is more a install/setup themselves kind of people. Some of the "usual" files are replaced w/ RedHat dependant stuff. Hope this info is (a) correct and (b) helpful. wuff, andy
