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

Tue Dec 20 00:56:04 HKT 2011

On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 10:11 AM, Jonathan Polom <jon at spkr.net> wrote:
> 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?

Would just like to add that I got the r8168 module compiled on
voyage-mpd 0.7.5 using the available linux-headers package. I had to
blacklist the r8169 module and manually run depmod -a after
compilation. I now have the r8168 module loaded for my Realtek
8111/8168 series controller on Voyage MPD.