Re: tlug: ppa

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

>>>>> "BOTi" == BOTi  <9915104t@example.com> writes:

    >> From: Ulrike Schmidt <798a5047@example.com>

    >> I did not knowingly upgrade the kernel, but when we installed a
    >> second harddisc we had some problems with installing RedHat 6.1

    BOTi> But anyway RH6.1 has a nicely compiled kernel with all the
    BOTi> modules.

Right.  And apparently there's a mismatch.  What Ulrike needs to do is
get the kernel and the modules to agree.

So she should simultaneously "upgrade" the kernel and the modules with
the same version.  (The reason for the quotes is that it doesn't
really matter if it's an upgrade or even a downgrade, you have to get
the kernel and modules in sync.)

One reason for getting the most recent kernel is that it is more like
to have a full suite of modules, including the PPA stuff...

    BOTi> So if you didn't upgrade the kernel, then why not use this
    BOTi> original one?

...because my bet is that she got those modules from somewhere else
and they're not part of the kernel distribution.  So the original one
_cannot_ work.

    >> >So go to the kernel src dir and "make clean; make bzImage;
    >> >make modules; make modules_install; " Then install the newly
    >> >compiled kernel, run lilo, and reboot.  This should fix it.

Assuming the configuration includes the necessary modules for the Zip
drive.

    >> I tried this, and when I entered "make bzImage" I was asked a
    >> lot of questions I was not sure how to answer, so I guessed
    >> that I need to

    BOTi> Can you quote things like this message next time? So I and
    BOTi> others who could possibly help would know what this is
    BOTi> about.

She's talking about the `make config' script; we don't need to see
that.

    >> configure the kernel first, killed this questionnaire and did
    >> "make oldconfig".

    BOTi> If you have a working X, you might do make xconfig as well.
    BOTi> Or make menuconfig if you have ncurses. The oldconfig method
    BOTi> is not very convenient.

Of course it is.  This is precisely what oldconfig is for!  If she
gets new questions, then the kernel and the config don't match.  This
is the easiest way to tell.  Of course, if in the old .config the PPA
modules were specifically disabled, this method is guaranteed to
fail.  (But that's a lot worse than "inconvenient.")

    >> Or is the problem not related to the config at all?

Apparently you are not getting the PPA modules built.  The old ones
are still there under /lib/modules so you get error messages.  So my
guess is that they are disabled or unavailable in the current .config.

    >> Why does the error message of "modprobe ppa" say that the
    >> resource or device is busy?

Probably it's just a bad message; the logic for figuring out exactly
why a modprobe fails is complicated because modprobe does a lot of
different things.  insmod is a much simpler operation, so its error
messages are more likely to make sense.

Use `make menuconfig' or `make xconfig'.  Go to SCSI support, then to
SCSI low-level drivers, then look to see whether the "IOMEGA parallel
port" is enabled.  You probably want PPA, but you might also make the
IMM modules (for newer IOMEGA peripherals) at the same time.

You can also check this quickly with
"egrep 'SCSI_(PPA|IMM)' /usr/src/linux/.config".  You will probably
see that neither is set in your current configuration.

    >> Was also wondering whether it is possible to revive RedHat 5.2
    >> on the first harddrive as an option, it is mounted at the
    >> moment under /mnt/oldlinux.  But its /boot directory looks a
    >> bit different from the currently booting /boot directory, there
    >> seems to be no kernel for putting into the lilo.config as an
    >> option.

This is probably not going to work terribly well even if you do find
the kernel because of glibc upgrades and so on.  There's a very good
chance that something else will break even if the Zip drive gets
fixed.


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