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Systems in the AST Bravo line sometimes fail to install LILO properly. The installer will complete successfully, but the system will not boot. You may see a lot of numbers on the screen.
What is the solution? We don't really know. Here are some things you can try:
Since we have moved from LILO to GRUB, this problem may be gone. We have not verified this.
None of these solutions are very good. If you find a better solution, please report it!
The Award BIOS version 4.50G is not Y2K compliant. This BIOS can be found in several higher-end 486 models. You will notice this problem when you set the time: the date will revert to 1994 every time the computer reboots.
There is no BIOS fix for this, but fortunately the hwclock program can deal with this situation. Go to
/etc/defaults/rcS
and add the line
BADYEAR=yes
This will tell the hwclock command to ignore the year in the BIOS and manage the year manually. The script that uses this variable is /etc/init.d/hwclock.sh
Once you have added the line, reboot the system and reset the time. Then reboot again to see if the system holds the right time.
There are some good online resources that list monitor refresh rates and settings. Some of the best ways to find monitor information online are:
FAI will detect almost every network card that works under Linux, so the first place to look for network card information is the dmesg.log file in the FAI logs. Look through this file to see what configuration information the network card driver reported. Here is an example of what to look for:
tulip.c:v0.91g-ppc 7/16/99 becker@cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov eth0: Digital DS21140 Tulip rev 32 at 0x6100, 00:80:C8:34:A8:48, IRQ 11. eth0: EEPROM default media type Autosense. eth0: Index #0 - Media MII (#11) described by a 21140 MII PHY (1) block. eth0: MII transceiver #8 config 3100 status 7829 advertising 01e1.
This tells you that the network card uses the tulip driver, that the card uses IRQ 11, and that the IO address is (probably) 0x6100 . This information is valuable if you need to specify parameters for kernel modules.
See Section 6.1.3 for more information about FAI log files, such as where to find them.
The autodetection tools detect and discover do not yet detect these cards properly. However, they are supported by the tulip driver.
These cards are important because apparently Sympatico installs these cards for its ADSL subscribers - removing any existing network cards in the process! However, Sympatico technicians “do not support Linux”, so we have to fix their damage by installing the right driver in /etc/modules .
These network cards use the ne kernel module. The FAI kernel detects them properly, but discover does not.
If you want to use the network after FAI has finished installing and you have rebooted, you have to find out the IO address of the card, and you have to manually add a line to /etc/modules :
ne io=io-address
where io-address is the IO-address of the card. I have found that io=0x240 usually works.
Even though ISPs are not hardware, it is worth mentioning information we have learned about different ISPs, as most ISPs do not officially support Linux for dial-up connections.
Since service providers are always changing, each entry here includes the date on which we entered the information.
Gateway http://www.gate-way.net does work with Linux, but wvdial has problems dialing to it. Apparently, Gateway uses PAP authentication.
We set up a connection using pppconfig, and it worked well.
This information was entered October 22, 2002.
In addition to providing DSL service, Sympatico currently manages a dial-in pool as well. We had no problems connecting to Sympatico using wvdial .
This information was entered October 22, 2002.
This section documents common resource allocations for devices under Linux. It may be useful when configuring modems and sound cards.
This is taken from the file /etc/serial.conf
These are the standard COM1 through COM4 devices # #/dev/ttyS0 uart 16450 port 0x3F8 irq 4 #/dev/ttyS1 uart 16450 port 0x2F8 irq 3 #/dev/ttyS2 uart 16450 port 0x3E8 irq 4 #/dev/ttyS3 uart 16450 port 0x2E8 irq 3
This is taken from the Modem-HOWTO, which you can find at
/usr/share/doc/HOWTO/en-txt/Modem-HOWTO.gz
You can sometimes break some of these assignments (for example, I often set network cards to IRQ 5) but be aware that you could generate IRQ conflicts by doing so.
You really really want to leave IRQs 1, 2, 6, 8, 9, 13, and 14 alone. You probably want to avoid reallocating IRQs 3, 7 and 15 unless you know what you are doing.
Standard IRQ assignments:
IRQ 0 Timer channel 0 (May mean "no interrupt".)
IRQ 1 Keyboard
IRQ 2 Cascade for controller 2
IRQ 3 Serial port 2
IRQ 4 Serial port 1
IRQ 5 Parallel port 2, Sound card
IRQ 6 Floppy diskette
IRQ 7 Parallel port 1
IRQ 8 Real-time clock
IRQ 9 Redirected to IRQ2
IRQ 10 not assigned
IRQ 11 not assigned
IRQ 12 not assigned
IRQ 13 Math coprocessor
IRQ 14 Hard disk controller 1
IRQ 15 Hard disk controller 2
2004-04-13