[ILUG] Customised Debian netinstall CD for Dell 2550/2650 (and more ?)

[Colm MacCarthaigh]

We had a slightly harder than normal time installing Debian on
our 2650's in that the Broadcom NiC isnt supported , and the
adaptec RAID solutions Dell provide don't even get recognised
without some jiggery-pokery.

For convienence I've created a custom Debian Network install CD 
that will work well with 2550's and 2650's and possibly other 
machines using those things :)

It's available at:

 http://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/heanet/woody-netinst-heanet-dell.iso (4.8M)
 http://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/heanet/readme.txt

or you can use whichever permutation of:

 (http|ftp|rsync)://ftp(.ipv6).heanet.ie/pub/heanet/

suits you. It's based on the bf2.4 set that's linked from
linux.ie with these changes:

  weeded out bundles of 2.2.20 drivers.tgz and other
  unneccessary things

  weeded out drivers not needed for Dell 2?50's

  added the bcm5700 driver, built in the Adaptec RAID
  drivers

I also added a "serial" boot option and changed syslinux to
use VGA and ttyS0 by default, so if you want to do a remote
install over a serial port, just boot it and use the "serial"
boot option. (Debian installations in different parts of
the country over serial ports are becoming common in here
actually). Also threw in IPv6, because we dual-stack and 
like to sort this at installation time :)
  
Anyway, there it is, if anyone finds themselves putting 
Debian on a 2650/2550 this should shave a fair bit off it :)

I have a half-working bf2.4 iso here which has been modified
for serial installations, if anyone is interested I can
actually roll it out.

-- 
Colm MacCarthaigh