Once PCMCIA is properly configured and installed, you should configure your device drivers as described in the next section.
3.10 Configure Device Driver Modules
Select the “Configure Device Driver Modules” menu item and look for devices that are on your system. Configure those device drivers, and they will be loaded whenever your system boots.
You don’t have to configure all your devices at this point; what is crucial is that any device configuration required for the installation of the base system is done here.
At any point after the system is installed, you can reconfigure your modules with the modconf program.
3.11 Configure the Network
You’ll have to configure the network even if you don’t have a network, but you’ll only have to answer the first two questions—“Choose the Host name,” and “Is your system connected to a network?”
If you are connected to a network, you’ll need the information you collected from 2.2.1. However, if your primary connection to the network will be PPP, you should choose NOT to configure the network.
dbootstrap will ask you a number of questions about your network; fill in the answers from 2.2.1. The system will also summarize your network information and ask you for confirmation. Next, you need to specify the network device that your primary network connection uses. Usually, this will be eth0 (the first Ethernet device). On a laptop, it’s more likely that your primary network device is pcmcia.
Here are some technical details you may find handy: The program assumes the network IP address is the bitwise AND of your system’s IP address and your netmask. It will guess the broadcast address is the bitwise OR of your system’s IP address with the bitwise negation of the netmask. It will guess that your gateway system is also your DNS server. If you can’t find any of these answers, use the system’s guesses. You can change them once the system has been installed, if necessary, by editing /etc/init.d/network. (On a Debian system, daemons are started by scripts in the directory /etc/init.d/.)