Re: Problems configuring Dlink-550TX.

[Nick Holland <nick@holland-consulting.net>]

Craig Hammond wrote:
> 
> Thanks a lot for that info...
> I figured I could do it manually, it would just take me time to learn.
> 
> I was really just curious why it isn't detected properly on the install
> kernel, but the generic kernel is fine.

Space considerations...

OpenBSD spends a lot of time effort keeping the install disk to only
one floppy.  It really does get down to 100 bytes here, 50 bytes
there.  They make judgment calls on what is needed and what space is
available to give the largest number of developers a smooth install. 
If this chip/NIC become more common, you may see this change in a
future release (and someone else will say "Hey! I installed 3.2 on
this NIC, why not 3.3?").

You will note that some other systems use multiple boot disks to get a
system installed.  This is a royal pain.  I, for one, really
appreciate the efforts that maintain the single boot.  Would I switch
OS-of-choice over this?  Of course not.  But I still appreciate this
detail. 8-)

One thing that may not be clear to you is all PCI devices should be
*detected* by OpenBSD.  That is the nature of the PCI bus -- there are
provisions to find out EXACTLY what is in each slot.  They may not be
*supported* though -- that requires software support (and disk
space).  Your boot floppy (and CD) detected the card just fine, but
lacked the support for it (hence, the "not configured" message).

> From what I have read, the CDROM30.fs image has most of the drivers on it.

Most, yes. 8-)
 
> This is no big deal as I can work around it.
> I'm just curious...

One way I work around problems like this is to stuff another NIC in
for install, do the install, then rename hostname.rl0 (or .ep0, or
.fxp0...whatever) to whatever I wanted to have in place, swap hardware
to what I wanted, and power back on.

Nick.
-- 
http://www.holland-consulting.net