On Sun, Mar 25, 2012 at 02:03:23PM +0800, Tim Lyth wrote:
Debian (using the NetInst 6.0.4 CD) gets in to the installer but can't detect either the GigE network card nor then Wifi card that are in my laptop.
The GigE card is an Atheros AR8151 NIC. I've googled for suggestions,
i had a very similar problem installing debian on an acer aspire d257 back in early Feb. it might have even been the same NIC, can't remember... i ended up updating the kernel and initrd in my pxeboot setup (in /tftp/di) with kernel version 3.2.0-1 and all the non-free firmware with: cd /tftp/di/sid/amd64 mkdir orig mv linux initrd.gz orig cp -af /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-1-amd64 ./linux mkdir initrd cd initrd zcat ../orig/initrd.gz | cpio -i --no-absolute-filenames cp -af /lib/modules/3.2.0-1-amd64/ lib/modules/ cp -af /lib/firmware/ lib/ find . | cpio -o -H newc | gzip -c > ../initrd.gz (this worked because I installed the appropriate non-free firmware packages onto my server, so the files were in /lib/firmware to be copied) i later discovered that there is alternative debian installer with all the excluded firmware, but I can't seem to find it again this morning. i did find a page documenting a similar approach to what I used: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/NetbootFirmware cool - this tells me i didn't need to unpack the initrd with cpio, I could have just made a new cpio archive with the firmware and /lib/modules, and then appended that to the original initrd.
I am tempted to install Virtualbox on to my laptop, install Linux in there, and then build a custom kernel with the correct drivers, but I would prefer to avoid that if possible.
another alternative would be to buy a cheap, known to be supported in Squeeze USB NIC and install with that. then upgrade to a later kernel from sid or wheezy, and install the required firmware package for the built-in nic. craig -- craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au> BOFH excuse #267: The UPS is on strike.