[Voyage-linux] Preferred method for compiling external kernel modules in voyage 0.8

[Jonathan Polom]

On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 9:43 AM, Jon Meek <meekjt at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 8:48 AM, Jonathan Polom <jon at spkr.net> wrote:
>>
>> I just started using Voyage MPD last week and quite like it, except
>> for one flaw I've found: building kernel modules for proprietary
>> drivers. The only problem I'm having (and this is not a voyage issue,
>> I had the same problem when I ran Debian stable) is that my wired NIC,
>> which is a lovely Realtek 8111/8168 series controller, uses the
>> problematic r8169 kernel module. The r8169 module is effectively broke
>> for my NIC and causes it to up/down the link randomly and drop a lot
>> of incoming packets. Obviously this is not acceptable and I need to
>> fix it. The accepted fix at this time is to use the r8168 module
>> provided by Realtek. Realtek provides the "source" for this driver on
>> their web site to be compiled as a kernel module and there's also an
>> r8168-dkms package in the Debian sid repos.
>>
>> So far I've had no success compiling the r8168 module from the Realtek
>> tarball or from the DKMS package out of sid (all deps are satisfied
>> for that package). I've installed the kernel source for the
>> 3.0.0-voyage kernel, untarred it to /usr/src/linux-source-3.0.0-voyage
>> and symlinked /usr/src/linux to it, but DKMS consistently claims that
>> it doesn't think the source for the kernel is installed when I run
>> `dpkg-reconfigure r8168-dkms`. I've tried compiling the module
>> directly from the Realtek source via their autorun.sh script, but it
>> looks in /lib/modules/3.0.0-voyage/build for something that isn't
>> there (not too sure what *should* be there even, I've tried symlinking
>> the kernel sources there but that doesn't work either). I've never had
>> this much trouble trying to compile a kernel module before, especially
>> in Debian.
>>
>> I searched my configured apt repos (squeeze, sid and voyage) for
>> available kernel headers and couldn't find one for the voyage kernel
>> (why isn't one available by default? that seems odd, especially so
>> since you're offering a kernel source package) since you really don't
>> need the full source tree available to compile a module in most cases.
>> I did find what looks like a kernel headers package in the voyage
>> experimental repository for the 3.0.0-voyage kernel. But I have to
>> ask: why is the headers package for the default voyage kernel
>> considered experimental? Will that package allow me to compile modules
>> against the headers it contains or are there some known issues with
>> it?
>>
>> So my main question here is: How is one supposed to compile a third
>> party/out-of-tree kernel module on voyage for the voyage kernel?
>>
>> Any help is appreciated on this topic.
>>
>> Jon
>>
>
> This is how I compiled the e1000e driver from Intel's tarball for
> Voyage 0.7.5. Note that this was done to fix an auto-negotiation
> problem that was actually due to a bad UTP cable.
>
> Since I did not want to significantly increase the size of my USB
> image, I built the driver on my mpd server which is a PC Engines ALIX
> board.
>
> On the ALIX board, where some development tools are already installed.
>
>  sudo apt-get update
>  sudo apt-get upgrade
>
>  sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r`
>
>  sudo reboot
>
> Log back in and move to an appropriate directory:
>
>  cd build
>
>  tar zxf ../dist/e1000e-1.6.3.tar.gz
>
>  sudo ln -s /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.38-voyage /usr/src/linux
>
>  make
>
> Then grab the compiled driver (mpd:~/build/e1000e-1.6.3/src/e1000e.ko)
> and get it to the target system (running USB system).
>
> On the USB system, verify what driver we are using:
>
>  dmesg | egrep e1000e
>   [    0.971963] e1000e: Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Driver - 1.2.20-k2
>
> Backup the original driver:
>
>  sudo cp -pi /lib/modules/2.6.38-voyage/kernel/drivers/net/e1000e/e1000e.ko
> /lib/modules/2.6.38-voyage/kernel/drivers/net/e1000e/e1000e.ko.orig
>
> Copy new driver into the modules directory
>
>  sudo cp -p ~/dist/e1000e.ko
> /lib/modules/2.6.38-voyage/kernel/drivers/net/e1000e
>
>  sudo /sbin/depmod -a
>
>  sudo dpkg-reconfigure linux-image-2.6.38-voyage
>
>  sudo reboot
>
> Log back in and verify that the new version is running:
>
>  dmesg | egrep e1000e
>  [    0.886074] e1000e: Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Driver - 1.6.3-NAPI
>
> Success!
>
> Jon (a different one...)
>

Did you have to configure additional apt repositories to find the
linux-headers package? I did an apt-cache search headers and didn't
find any header packages for the voyage kernel, only the debian
kernels. I'm using voyage 0.8 if that matters which uses the
3.0.0-voyage kernel. The appropriate headers package would be
linux-headers-3.0.0-voyage and that doesn't seem to exist. From
memory, I have the squeeze repos, voyage repos and sid repos (for the
r8168-dkms package) in sources.list. I will downgrade if necessary as
I don't require bleeding edge anything for this device.