Re: hosers-talk: SuXE

[Jeff Schroeder <jeffs@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 03:44 PM 3/24/2002, you wrote:
> [snip]
> Installation was more or less successful. I've got an old-world computer,
> with broken OF, so it first starts into MacOS 8.x and uses BootX to switch
> into linux. Using 2.2.18, everything boots up pretty well; I get some
> modprobe dependency errors, but they look harmless enough as they all seem
> to be symlinks relating to 2.4.2. Of course, kernel 2.4.2 just doesn't
> work on my machine.

There are a bunch of known problems with the 2.4 kernels.  They haven't 
really become stable until the > .14 series.  Unless you really needs some 
of the new features it is safer to stick with 2.2.

> After installation last night, I rebooted. Everything worked. During
> installation, I'd only specified that eth0 should be brought up on my
> D-Link 10/100 PCI card. SuSE's installer auto-detected it just fine; it's
> using the via-rhine driver. My onboard ethernet is 10baseT, and is
> auto-detected as Apple-MACE.
>
> So, on first boot, eth0 came up. I ssh'ed in from my ThinkPad. I logged in
> successfully. Great, I thought. I can go to bed and get Apache working
> tomorrow, and then go from there.
> [snip]
> Today, eth0 will not come up.
>
> I have used suse's yast&yast2 config tools to add eth1 for the onboard
> ethernet. /etc/modules.conf has:
>
> alias eth0 via-rhine
> alias eth1 mace

Never used this method so I don't know.  I am used to adding eth1 as an 
extra boot option in lilo.


> right at the top. Starting up yast shows that eth0 and eth1 are correctly
> configured and even active. When I exit and run rcnetwork restart, I get:
>
> Shutting down network device eth1eth1: unknown interface: no such device
>                                                                 failed
> Shutting down network device eth0eth0: unknown interface: no such device
>                                                                 failed
>
> Looking in /proc/modules, I find nothing.
>
> Looking in /var/log/messages, I find a few interesting things:
>
> modprobe: modprobe: Can't open dependencies file
> /lib/modules/2.4.2/modules.dep (No such file or directory)
>
> (there are a few of these errors)
>
> and
>
> kernel: No module symbols loaded
>
>
> Looking in /lib/modules, there's a 2.2.18 directory filled with
> subdirectories and module libraries. There's no 2.4.2 library.

When you build the kernel did you also compile and install the modules? 
'make modules' and 'make modules_install' might help.


> Although a complete linux dummy, I am guessing that since I'm getting
> these modprobe errors and since /proc/modules is empty (I'm guessing it
> would list loaded modules), none of my modules are loading -- including my
> ethernet drivers -- because somewhere modprobe is being told to look in
> /lib/modules/2.4.2/, not /lib/modules/2.2.18.
>
> I'm kind of amazed, though, that I can get a running system with no
> modules loaded.

Modules aren't required by any means.  You can compile everything into the 
kernel if you want.  The point of modules is to make your kernel smaller 
(if you have space concerns) and has the advantage of unloading things you 
aren't using. I'd recommend making your ethernet drivers part of the 
kernel.  This makes it boot a little bit faster, and if stuff gets 
corrupted in your /lib directory, you don't lose ethernet.


> Rather than fix the root cause of this problem (that is, why modprobe
> thinks I'm running 2.4.2), I was thinking about creating a symlink:
>
> /lib/modules/2.4.2 -> /lib/modules/2.2.18

This will work, but may give a bunch of version problems.  It shouldn't 
break anything.  I'd start by finding out whether this is actually a 
modules problem or a driver problem.

jeff