Hi everyone. I'm completely new to this forum and completely new to Debian. I have installed Debian with the 2.4 kernal today. However, I having a few problems. Any help would be greatly appreciated . Right,

1) I have an intel D875pbz motherboard and I have to compile the drivers for the built-in ethernet. I was able to get the tar file, but when I tried to make the makefile, I found I had no make! Worse of I have no internet connection to get make from some archive (since I can't use the ethernet device) . I do however have the debian cds. All 7 of them. How do I get make to work? Where do I get it from? I tried putting in the second debian disk and doing

debian: apt-cdrom add
debian: apt-get update

but I really have no idea what that does anyhow.

Please help, I'm lost and really eager to learn Debian. Prem

When you have un-tarred, normally you need to do ./configure, then make, then make install (as root).

'apt-cdrom add' adds cd-rom as an upgrade source
'apt-get update' updates your distro to the current version. It probably won't work without a net connection as you will be updating to your current version.

This post says that kernel 2.4.21 supports your board.

Intel havesome drivers but they are RedHat and SuSE drivers. They are tarred so they may work.

Hope that helps.

Thank you for replying. I'll try what you said; first to ./configure, make, and finally make install. Also, does anyone know how to work with debian's package installer of the cd? I don't really understand it. Thanks, Prem.

You need to add the cd as a source. The Debian website should have a tutorial.

You should have had a prompt during the "first-boot" where the system read the contents of the cd-rom, then asked if you wanted to add any more CDs.

As a side point, how can that first-time-boot program be invoked again?

IIRC dpkg-reconfigure base-config

Sick! Thanks, I hadn't really looked into it

If you don't have 'make' at all, most likely your installation is corrupted.
I suggest you reinstall Debian instead of trying to fix those broken packages.
(there might be more which you do not know yet)
A fine installation should have a working 'make' in /usr/bin

'apt-get update' only refreshes your apt-cache info. Changes reflect any changes you have made to your sources.list file and any changes made by the debian distribution maintainers in terms of reassigning package designations such as moving a package from 'testing' to 'stable'. No changes are made to the packages installed on your system.

you were probably thinking of 'apt-get upgrade' which can potentially alter currently installed packages, or 'apt-get dist-upgrade' which goes even further than 'apt-get upgrade' when it runs into a dependecy issue.

Wrong. This is Debian, not Redhat. All the OP has to do is apt-get install make

But since they are trying to compile from source, the configure script will probably fail out on a few other things too (gcc, build tools, etc).

The quickest way w/o building that stuff from source is:

apt-cache search kernel-image

and then

apt-get install kernel-image-* where * corresponds to your architecture. You'll have to edit lilo.conf and include an initrd=/initrd.img line in the Linux stanza. It will prompt you to do this.

Reboot. If the chipset is supported, the NIC will be now availabe. Edit /etc/network/interfaces and run

ifconfig

Good luck!

Tramontane - yes you are right. It's wierd trying to remember Linux commands when you are tied to a Windows box. I did, of course, mean 'apt-get upgrade'.

To llamakc:
I said "there might be more which you do not know yet".
What if there are dozens of broken packages in his installation?
Would anyone like to figure out which ones they are or simply reinstall Debian in 20mins,
which would give you a healthier system.

However, I would say it is a good practice to try to fix them one by one.

Yes, reinstalling takes 20 minutes. I agree. Though I don't see the logic of reinstalling when merely installing a program that is not installed will suffice. Make is not provided in the base install.

If you are comfortable reinstalling in this situation, then I concede that is your opinion and strategy. I would choose not to. I do agree that getting to packages one at a time is the way to go. He doesn't have any corrupted packages though. He doesn't have the package "make". Reinstalling will not add that package.

Anyway, is it now working? is the important question. He'll have plenty of time to dig through preinst and postinst scripts when he jumps headfirst into Unstable...

For example: the msttcorefonts package is borked. One must edit /usr/sbin/update-ms-fonts

And remove the the first URL in URLROOTS at line 37. I guess I should see if there's a bug posted yet.

To llamakc:
Well, I guess we are talking about 2 different installations.
I suppose his was a base inst and what I am talking about is not.
To premsaggar:
Did you select set of packages you wanted to install?
There should be a screen showing you some categories during the installation,
such as x windows,file server,locale support,games...

Let's at least be specific: you are talking about either tasksel or dselect. Has the OP used those during installation?

Nonetheless. make is not installed. I'm talking about the installation that was mentioned at the top of this thread.

Original Poster: do this:

apt-cache search kernel-image

that will output some packages to the screen. Match up your machine (686, AMD-k7) and install one of those images. As an earlier poster mentioned, the 2.4.21 kernels DO support your mobo/NIC.

apt-get install that.

If this is unacceptable, then just keep firing away at the ./configure script inside of the driver directory you are trying to build. What do I mean by this?

Well you first must install make

apt-get install make

then run the ./configure script. This checks for the proper build tool-chain. It possibly will error out on different requirements. THEN you take that information and INSTALL those packages.

In example, it may need gcc. And will error out. So you then do

apt-get install gcc

And re-run ./configure. IF it errors out once more on a new package, you apt-get install that package.

Often, when you are manually compiling software, the configure will spit out:

foobar not found. Exiting.

and you'll do

apt-get install foobar

and you'll discover you already HAVE foobar installed.

If this happens, install the -dev packages.

apt-get install foobar-dev

Once you get your head around it, the method is so unbelievably simple that you'll become an instant zealot.

GOOD LUCK!