[H-GEN] RH 7.2 PCMCIA Boot and Dynamic IP address renewal

[Hilton Travis]

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Hi All,

I am about to convert my trusty laptop over from Windows XP to RedHat
7.2 and Ximian Gnome Desktop so it will be more at home on my home
network which is slowly but surely becoming Linuxized.  I have come
across 2 issues with this:

1. When I try to boot the laptop using the PCMCIA boot disk (and then
the PCMCIA driver disk), I cannot get to my web server to install Linux
(unfortunately, I have a deceased CD-ROM in the notebook).  My 3COM
3CXFE575CT NIC is detected, an IP is assigned, and if I hit Alt-F4 I can
see that the local domain name, dns servers and gateway were retrieved
successfully, but I cannot get it to see my http install point
properly.  I keep getting errors (in the Alt-F4 screen) like:
  transferring http://192.168.69.101//./RedHat/base/updates.img to a fd
  transferring http://192.168.69.101//./disc1/RedHat/base/updates.img to
a fd
  transferring http://192.168.69.101//./RedHat/base/netstg1.img to a fd
  transferring http://192.168.69.101//./disc1/RedHat/base/netstg1.img to
a fd

... and then the report of :
  File //redHat/base/netstg1.img not found on server.

I noticed a second "//" immediately after the ip address of the web
server, and I *think* this is the issue.  When I installed from the
network boot disks (not the PCMCIA boot disks) onto another machine,
from the exact same web server, it worked fine.

Any ideas, because I am really stuck on this one.


2. In Windows, I can type "ipconfig /release" and "ipconfig /renew" to
release and renew the IP address that has been dynamically assigned to
the NIC.  I have tried searching for a way to do this on Linux, but have
so far been unsuccessful.  It seems neither dhcpcd nor ifconfig support
this functionality, and I thought that dhcpcd would be the obvious
choice.  Does anyone know of a way to release/renew the IP without
rebooting the machine?

Thanks in advance,

Regards,
HiltonT


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