Background
The next stage in the development of the C-N-U network is to get rid of its dependency on M$ software as much as possible, and at the same time make maximum use of inventory as possible. So pressing the old Toshiba Satellite 310CDS into service as a Samba DC seemed like a good next step. The first step was to install some sort of Linux on it. I opted for Fedora Core 1 hoping that it wouldn't balk at the 64MB of RAM and 2GB hard disk. It didn't, though it did take me three goes to get it on, more due to pilot error on my part than anything else. (I guess you can think of this as preparation for moving the servers down the cellar where the bucket loads of heat they chuck out can help keep it warm and dry, instead of stewing me in the attic like they did last summer.)
The only thing was I was getting an error from the PCMCIA service on boot up.
Starting pcmcia:
PCI: No IRQ known for interrupt pin A on device 00:13.0. Please try using pci=biosirq.
PCI: No IRQ known for interrupt pin B on device 00:13.0. Please try using pci=biosirq.
So I tried inserting the Xircom network PC Card I already possess, as the one I've ordered hasn't arrived and don't need the other laptop on the network at the mo'. Rebooted, and still no go!
Problem
Something about the above error meant I couldn't get the Tosh onto the nework, and that would rather inhibit its effectiveness as a Samba DC!
Solution
So dutifully I dug around on the newsgroups and found I needed to add the parameter pci=biosirq to the kernel line. This can be done interactively by pressing "a" at the Grub screen, or by adding it to the grub.conf file in the /etc directory. Neither worked
So after more digging around I found this How to install Red Hat 9 on a Toshiba Satellite. This told me lots of stuff, but importantly - holding the ESC key at power-on gets me into the BIOS config utility and that I needed to verify the BIOS settings as described. This I did and checked the settings in BIOS with the webpage. I changed only one setting in the Lower Page: PC Card from Controller Mode = Auto-Selected to Controller Mode = CardBus/16-bit. Save and exit resumed the boot process and it worked! The PC Card device was detected and loaded.
To check it I tried /etc/rc.d/init.d/pcmcia reload before using ifconfig to give it its IP address and then started it using ifconfig eth0 up. And yes! I could ping it from my workstation - success!
So to make this permanent I added an ifcfg-eth0 file to the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts directory and rebooted. All appeared well until I tried to ping it, when it did not respond. Doing the "reload" thing again made it work. However, a couple of more reboots and the whole networking thing came up OK. Result!
Last job was to verify Webmin was started and to log into the Tosh from my workstation's browser on port 10000. Verified the network settings and set up the DNS server address and its a done deal!