[Tfug] Ubuntu Gutsy Compiling Kernel

[Andrew Ayre]

Hi Jude,

I appear to have solved the problem, although it's not a solution I
particularly like.

I followed your suggestion and searched for problems with Davicom
DM9102AF cards and Linux. I found a few people with problems, and tried
a few ideas, but none worked.

So I finally swapped my NIC for a 9 year old Realtek RTL8139 that I had
from a Win98 box. Now eth0 appears to work. Yay.

Incidentally the stock Gutsy kernel and my vanilla kernels were loading
the exact same version of the Davicom driver, so I am guessing that
something doesn't work properly in the kernel and the Ubuntu team knew
how to fix it in their custom kernel.

This wasted about a week of my spare time. It reminds me of my second
biggest waste of spare time with computers - spending four days trying,
and failing, to install a CDROM drive in my brother-in-law's Mac running
System 7 or MacOS 8 (can't remember which).

Andy

Jude Nelson wrote:
> What is the chipset of your NIC?  You may have to supply the vanilla kernel
> a chipset-specific patch as well as the RTAI one.
> 
> I'm not sure the RTAI patch will work with 2.6.23 as well as
> 2.6.22.xx...theCompletely Fair Scheduler in
> 2.6.23 I heard hampers the ability to have real-time responses from the
> kernel, because the CFS distributes CPU time to all processes equally (and
> there isn't a config option to turn it off).
> 
> Kind Regards,
> Jude Nelson
> 
> On 10/25/07, Andrew Ayre <andy at britishideas.com> wrote:
>> Hi Jude,
>>
>> Thanks for the reply. Here is the problem though:
>>
>>   - with the Ubuntu version of the kernel, the kernel won't compile with
>> the RTAI patch
>>
>>   - with the vanilla kernel ethernet doesn't work for some reason
>>
>> I am patching version 2.6.22.9 with the RTAI 2.6.22.9 patch. When I did
>> a diff between the vanilla kernel and the Ubuntu kernel, there are a lot
>> of changes.
>>
>> The RTAI documentation recommends only patching vanilla kernels.
>>
>> My only thought at this point is to give the vanilla 2.6.23 a try, but
>> that takes me even closer to the bleeding edge...
>>
>> Any suggestions on how to proceed? I looked at the syslog after booting
>> with the vanilla kernel and didn't see anything obviously wrong.
>>
>> Thanks for the help!
>>
>> Andy
>>
>> Jude Nelson wrote:
>>> To find out how to kernels differ, get the vanilla one and the Ubuntu
>> one
>>> and do this:
>>>
>>> diff -u /path/to/vanilla/kernel /path/to/Ubuntu/kernel >
>>> /path/to/convenient/patchfile
>>>
>>> That'll give you a source patch file that will contain all the patches
>>> applied to the Ubuntu kernel from the vanilla.
>>>
>>> To set up RTAI, you'll need to know what kernel version(s) the RTAI
>> patch in
>>> question requires.  Just grab the one you want and the corresponding
>>> kernel.  Unpack the kernel, cd into the kernel's root source directory,
>> and
>>> execute this command*:
>>>
>>> patch -Np1 < /path/to/RTAI/diff
>>>
>>> (fill in the blanks as needed).
>>>
>>> *If you want to add Ubuntu's patches to the vanilla kernel, then apply
>> the
>>> patch you created above BEFORE the RTAI diff.
>>>
>>> Now, do a make menuconfig to load in the config options (you don't need
>> to
>>> feed it the Ubuntu kernel config--the script is smart enough to do that
>>> itself).
>>>
>>> If you don't feel like looking through all the options, just abort and
>> have
>>> a look inside the .config file in the root directory of the kernel.
>>> Somewhere, there should be an RTAI option.  You may need to enable it
>>> manually.  Chances are, the CONFIG_xxx key/value pair will have the
>> string
>>> "RTAI" in there somewhere, so you can easily use vi to locate it.
>>>
>>> After that, just a "make-kpkg --initrd --bzimage kernel_image
>> modules_image"
>>> command should create a kernel deb and any additional out-of-tree
>> modules
>>> you may need (you'll need module-assistant, fakeroot, make-kpkg, etc. to
>> do
>>> this).  If you don't want an initrd, then omit the "--initrd" option.
>>>
>>> Hope this helps,
>>> Jude
>>>
>>> On 10/25/07, Glen Pfeiffer <glen at thepfeiffers.net> wrote:
>>>> I don't have any answers, but am posting this to start it as a new
>> thread.
>>>> -- andy at britishideas.com wrote:
>>>>> I'm running Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy on my desktop PC and I want to patch the
>>>>> kernel with RTAI. However my knowledge of patching and kernels is
>>>>> limited... Here is what I tried:
>>>>>
>>>>> I grabbed the Linux source from the Ubuntu gutsy repos and found it to
>>>>> be 2.6.22.9. I built it and installed the package and it worked fine.
>> I
>>>>> used /boot/config-2.6.22-14-generic as the .config file.
>>>>>
>>>>> Next I grabbed 2.6.22.9 from kernel.org. I built it in the same way
>> and
>>>>> installed the package. It works except Ethernet is broken. I again
>> used
>>>>> /boot/config-2.6.22-14-generic as the .config file.
>>>>>
>>>>> In both cases I didn't configure the kernel - I simply built it.
>>>>>
>>>>> So I am assuming that something was patched in the Ubuntu version to
>> fix
>>>>> some kind of problem.
>>>>>
>>>>> eth0 appears to be ok, but there are no packets in or out.
>>>>>
>>>>> Does anyone have any pointers on how do I find out what patch is
>> missing
>>>>> from my vanilla kernel? It seems Gutsy ships with 2.6.22.14, but
>> nothing
>>>>> beyond 9 is available from kernel.org. So I'm guessing the Ubuntu team
>>>>> made a few revs of their own.
>>>>>
>>>>> I posted on ubuntuforums.org but haven't received any replies on this.
>>>>>
>>>>> thanks, Andy
>>>>>
>>>>> -- Andy
>> --
>> Andy
>> PGP Key ID: 0x67090A54
>>
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> 
> 

-- 
Andy
PGP Key ID: 0x67090A54