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

Tue Dec 20 12:21:18 HKT 2011

On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 9:56 AM, Jonathan Polom <jon at spkr.net> wrote:
> 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.
>

FWIW, you can build plain kernel.org kernels too,
and skip the debian-isms.

Just untar the kernel, copy the voyage config to .config,
make oldconfig (to update it with latest CONFIG_* items)
make

After making, I install to the build-box (a 32 bit laptop) then scp everything
(/lib/modules/$newver and /boot/*$newver*) over to the voyage box.
Then edit /boot/grub/menu.lst to add the stanza for the new kernel.