Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 35959
RFE: pcmciadd.img diskette not recognized by pcmcia.img diskette
Last modified: 2007-04-18 12:32:40 EDT
I am trying to to a linux rescue on an ftp connection using a PCMCIA card ethernet. The versions of the disk images were on Rawhide, about April 14th, 2001. I booted the pcmcia.img diskette. It loaded, and then asked for the PCMCIA Driver Diskette, which was pchiadd.img. The installer complained the diskette was not the diskette it wanted, and thus failed to initialize the PCMCIA ethernet card I use. Further, I didn't get a second chance to insert the PCMCIA diskette. I would have expected to be able to do a linux rescue. Steps to reproduce: 1 Make diskettes from pcmcia.img and pcmciadd.img in the Rawhide directory. 2 Boot from pcmcia.img 3 Type "linux rescue" and return 4 When asked for PCMCIA driver diskette, insert pcmciadd.img diskette. Desired outcomes: continue to be able to linux rescue. Actual outcome: PCMCIA driver diskette is not recognized, so FTP-based rescue is impossible. The diskette was recognized under Beta/Wolverine iPeter Jones
I have not seen this in our internal testing. I will verify with the latest tree.
Created attachment 15384 [details] pcmcia.img file I downloaded from rawhide, dated April 5, 2001
Created attachment 15385 [details] Copy of pcmciadd.img file from rawhide, dated April 5, 2001
I tried my test again today, under stricter experimental conditions: 1) Another pair of diskettes 2) Full re-formatting, instead of using existing MSDOS diskettes 3) Power-down before reboot When I boot the pcmcia.img diskette, I see the version number 7.0.91. In response to the boot prompt, I type: linux rescue On c1 (the main console), the system enters VGA mode and appears to run normally; the last message is the prompt: "Please insert your PCMCIA driver disk into your floppy drive now <OK> <Cancel>" On c3 (reached by typing ALT-F3), the last messages are: * going to insmod pcmcia_core.o (path is NULL) * failed to load pcmcia_core - ask for pcmciadd On c4 (reached by typing ALT-F4), the last message is: <6> hub.c: 2 ports detected <6> hub.c: registered new ??? (can't read my handwritten note, sorry) I return to c1 with ALT-F1, swap the diskette for pcmciadd.img, and hit RETURN. c1 shows: "Initializing PC card devices", then "That floppy does not look like a Red Hat PCMCIA driver disk <OK> c3 had the following additional messages: * read rhpcmcia <blank line> * going to insmod pcmcia_core.o - path is (NULL) c4 shows no change I click OK. I continue through the dialogues: Choose a Language, I choose English. Keyboard: US Then I get "What type of media contains the rescue image", and the only choices are CDROM and Hard Drive. I was hoping for an FTP choice here. Comments: 1) When downloading diskette images, I found the prompt "Please insert your PCMCIA driver disk" confusing, for I didn't know which image I would need. Fortunately, the answer is given in c3, but most beginners would not be aware of this. It would be simple to change the message to "Please insert your PCMCIADD diskette". 2) The message "That floppy does not look like a Red Hat PCMCIA driver disk" should give the user another opportunity to insert the correct diskette. 3) I wish there were a verification tool running on Windows 98 et al. that would checksum validate a downloaded image, and another that would compare a diskette with that downloaded image. This would detect possible user errors in creating diskettes. For reference, I have posted the images I have downloaded, as pcmciar.img, and pcmciaddr.img. Because of the size of these files, I suggest RedHat delete these from this bug report after verification. Thank you for your prompt response to my first report.
For details of the machine this bug was detected on, please see bug# 25966
Some responses: 1) It's too late to change this at this time because of translations. 2) I agree, that would be nice. I'll look into it. 3) I have heard that there are md5sum freeware utilities for Windows, but I have not used any of these personally. For items 1 and 2, it's too late for these to be put into the current tree, but we will consider these for a future release. I'll change the severity tag to 'enhancement'.
I tried the disk images under version 7.1. The pcmciadd.img disk is accepted, solving the problem stated in the Short Summary. That would account for RedHat not seeing the problem in internal testing.
I have successfully run RedHat linux rescue on ftp with a PCMCIA card under 7.1. I believe this problem can be marked as resolved. As a further documentation enhancement, it would be useful to note that the frustration of not being able to log onto a busy public ftp server can be relieved by using a copy of the essential files, on a nearby private ftp server, viz: some directory, can use non-anonymous login 7.1 (optional) RedHat base netstg1.img netstg2.img These files require about 5 megabytes.