netboot image fails to start network in Karmic

[Ian McMichael]

I have downloaded build 20081029ubuntu66 of the Karmic netboot image from http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/karmic/main/installer-i386/current/images/netboot/netboot.tar.gz and placed it on our TFTP server to replace the Jaunty one.

Booting from a test laptop (Compaq Armada M300) via PXE loads the menu and the installation starts. However, no IP address is found via DHCP. An attempt to configure the network manually gives the error "An error occurred and the network configuration process has been aborted. You may retry it from the installation main menu.".

The machine has an Intel Corporation 82557/8/9/0/1 Ethernet Pro 100 (rev 09) network card. Under Jaunty it works fine with the e100 module v3.5.23-k6-NAPI.

I'm not 100% certain this is the right package to file this bug against but followed the directions in https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage as closely as I can. It is certainly a regression from Jaunty. If you need any more information from the machine during a failed installation, please just ask.

[Ian McMichael (ian-sigma-uk)]

I have just found the way out of the installer to the shell and reviewed syslog. The problem appears to be:

check-missing-firmware: no missing firmware in /tmp/missing-firmware
firmware.sh[1900]: Cannot find firmware file 'e100/d101s_ucode.bin'
kernel: [timestamp] e100 0000:00:09.0: firmware: requesting e100/d101s_ucode.bin
kernel: [timestamp] e100: eth0: e100_request_firmware: Failed to load firmware "e100/d101s_ucode.bin": -2
check-missing-firmware: no missing firmware in /tmp/missing-firmware

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This particular bug has already been reported and is a duplicate of bug 451872, so it is being marked as such. Please look at the other bug report to see if there is any missing information that you can provide, or to see if there is a workaround for the bug. Additionally, any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in the other report. Please continue to report any other bugs you may find.