Help with PXE and Broadcom 4401 network card

[keeger]

I have tried both knoppix 6.7.0 and 6.7.1 (cd rom versions).

The problem is this: if I boot to CD, I noticed that modules ssb.ko and b44.ko are blacklisted. a comment for ssb.ko is that it breaks a wireless driver on a HP mini. There's no real comment on b44, other than it depends on ssb, so maybe that's the thinking there.

the problem is I'm trying to boot Dell Inspiron's, which have this card. If I boot to CD, and uncomment out the blacklist, then modprobe b44 loads and works great.

However, I am using a PXE environment. When it attempts to PXE boot the Inspiron, i get dropped to /bin/sh tty job control off thing.

This tells me the initram is not loading the nic drivers, and it can't establish the NFS connection to the PXE server.

I gunzip / cpio -id the initram, and in the /modules/net folder I find...

00_ssb.ko
b44.ko

So I'm officially confused. I do not see any sort of a blacklist entry, and in the init script, it seems to me it calls all files in the /modules/net folder and sends them to insmod.

So why is it failing to load b44 and do my network? From my investigation, no firmware is required for these cards either. I can't seem to troubleshoot this as i see no messages other than:

"loading kernel"
"/bin/sh job control turned off"

help please?

[keeger]

Well I finally got it to work, thanks to the command modinfo.

I knew b44 was dependent on ssb based on google. I did not know that ssb was dependent on pcmcia.ko.

I added pcmcia.ko to the initram, and it all worked. Might i suggest that pcmcia.ko be included by default for the Knoppix terminal server initram?

I am no genius with drivers and conflicts, but I can't imagine loading drivers/pcmcia/pcmcia.ko breaks any network things, but it will allow those inspirons to load.

and just because I'm not sure about insmod order, I put it in the folder as 00_0pcmcia.ko to ensure first load.