Hello everyone,

I installed the Debian package kernel-image-2.4.27-2-586tsc on my old laptop (133MHz Pentium), in order to get better apm and acpi support (which I did). However, two weird things happen during boot: somehow, I've lost all my pcmcia support (and thus my internet connection), and now the computer thinks that I have an ext3 filesystem (I have an ext2 filesystem for speed). It sits there for about five minutes trying to figure out why it can't read the filesystem, until it realizes that it's not ext3. How do I stop this? Also, how do I get my pcmcia drivers back?

I've looked into the /lib/modules/2.4.27-2-586tsc/kernel/fs directory, and noticed that I have an unneeded ext3 driver. Should I remove this? Will this solve the problem?

Please let me know what files you may need to see.

Thank you

You should install pcmcia-modules-`uname -r`

What are the contents of your fstab?

Ummm...I don't have internet on that computer (anymore--pcmcia failure). How do I get the modules? Should I rawrite them to a diskette?

My fstab:

filesystem____mountpt__type_____options______________dump___pass

/dev/hda1_____/________ext2_____errors=remount-ro_____0_____1
/dev/hda5_____none_____swap_____sw____________________0_____0
proc__________/proc____proc_____defaults______________0_____0
/dev/fd0______/floppy__auto_____user,noauto___________0_____0
/dev/cdrom____/cdrom___iso9660__ro,user,noauto________0_____0

The slowdown occurs when the boot process tries to check partitions of /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0. It keeps complaining that there is a dma_timer_expiry error. It finishes several (failed) checks by stating that it cannot find an ext3fs. It continues as usual from there.

The modprobe fails, saying it can't find module *.

You should be able to boot into your old kernel and get pcmcia to work, install the pcmcia-modules for the new kernel then reboot into it.

How do I reboot into the old kernel?

Assuming you didn't remove it, when you reboot you are presented with a menu of currently installed kernels. You are free to chose which one to load.

No menu is present (I think it was automatically disabled when I installed the new kernel), but the old kernel is still present--it's an option in /etc/lilo.conf, if the first kernel fails to boot. However, commenting out the first kernel's presence in the /etc/lilo.conf file doesn't cause the old kernel to boot

EDIT: Never mind. /sbin/lilo -v worked after I commented out the new kernel image. Downloading pcmcia packages...SUCCESS!

EDIT: Still, though--how do I configure my computer to mount my root file system as ext2? I did a bit of research and it seems that kernels 2.4 and above assume the ext3fs, and (if it cannot mount the root file system) it will try to mount it as ext2 (in case of failure). It seems that my kernel tries to mount the root file system as cramfs, and when that fails, it tries ext2. I want the kernel to try ext2 first. I've already tried adding "rootfstype=ext2" to the append field of the kernel image in lilo.conf, but that resulted in a kernel panic. How do I make the kernel assume ext2?