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

Fri Dec 16 23:11:21 HKT 2011

On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 10:10 AM, Jonathan Polom <jon at spkr.net> wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 10:05 AM, Zenny <garbytrash at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Yeah, I tried like what Jonathan and Jon explained in 0.8, but failed
>> miserably. I want to roll back to the standard kernel what squeeze
>> officially supports, and trying to install the 2.6.32-6 kernel has
>> been a pain in the ass for the last few days.
>>
>> Actually, there is no clear documentation on how to use SDK and that
>> confused me a while.
>>
>> On 12/16/11, Jonathan Polom <jon at spkr.net> wrote:
>>> 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.
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Voyage-linux mailing list
>>> Voyage-linux at list.voyage.hk
>>> http://list.voyage.hk/mailman/listinfo/voyage-linux
>>>
>
> Alright, so I'm not the only one having this problem. That's good I
> guess. It sounds like the voyage 3.0.0 kernel is not complete at this
> point then (missing essential packages for module building). I will
> try 0.7.5 since it seems it works to compile modules against. They
> need to get a kernel headers package for 0.8 or else list it as
> development (not even rc material in my book). But why can't I build
> the DKMS module against the kernel source? Is there something I need
> to do to prepare the source? I tried running make oldconfig but that
> bombed out due to lack of essential support files. Is it completely
> not normal to compile kernel modules against the full kernel source?

How old is 0.7.5?