Hello, unlucky sysadmin. Glad you found me.

It's late and I'm tired so I'll be brief.

As you must know by now, the new Dell servers (at least in the r210 and r410 range) ship
with BCM5716 gbit NICs, whose PCI IDs aren't compiled into the current latest kernel[1]
found in the Lenny installer[2]. Unfortunately in my case it was not acceptible to use
Debian Squeeze (testing) installer, or to supply the drivers/firmware on removable media
(eg, USB key) during the install.

As of 2010-02-18:
[1] Version 2.6.26-2 rev 21lenny3 
[2] Debian Lenny 5.04

Therefore, using this patch:
http://www.mail-archive.com/debian-kernel@lists.debian.org/msg52571.html

I have made the following custom changes to the netinstall image:
1) added the patched bnx2 module to the initrd boot image
2) replaced the "old" latest kernel (rev 17) with the current (rev 21lenny3), and patched bnx2
3) added the firmware-bnx2 module to the package list (yeah, so this image is not "free" anymore)
4) preseeded the install with both firmware-bnx2 and openssh-server (everybody wants that, right?!)

The reason I replaced the kernel package with the current latest is because the netinstall
performs a package upgrade. Therefore if you want to keep your working bnx2.ko module after
rebooting, you *MUST* either avoid the package upgrade, or have a kernel package on the CD
which "appears" to be the same version as the official Debian latest.

This means if the next Debian revision of the 2.6.26 kernel comes out and they still have
not included these patches, you could find yourself boned. In which case you might want to
try installing the kernel from inside the .iso, located here:

/pool/main/l/linux-2.6/linux-image-2.6.26-2-amd64_2.6.26-21lenny3_amd64.deb


I am making available both i386 and amd64 install images. See here:
http://insanelabs.com/debian/debian-lenny-cannot-load-broadcom-nic-drivers-asking-for-firmware-bnx2-06-405fw-during-install/

----------------------
In this archive you will find, for amd64:

amd64/bnx2.ko
firmware-bnx2_0.14+lenny2_all.deb
debian-lenny-5.04-netinst-amd64-bcm5716.iso

I've supplied the patched bnx2.ko module and the firmware-bnx2 package - just in case.

Hope it helps. Happy installing. You're welcome.

(You don't need to know who I am, do you? Who cares? :-)
