Re: kernel 2.2.0pre2 problems

[William Stearns <wstearns pobox com>]

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Good day, Cokey,

On Fri, 1 Jan 1999, Cokey de Percin wrote:

> Ok, I'm running RedHat 5.2, a clean install, not an upgrade with a 
> patched 2.0.34 kernel running SMP on a dual PPRO and it's running
> great.  
> 
> Then I decided to try the 2.2 stuff.  Pulled down the full source 
> to 2.2 pre2 and configured/compiled it.  I'm almost up, but I'm
> getting the following errors:
> 
> Dec 31 23:38:17 gandolf modprobe: can't locate module char-major-4
> Dec 31 23:39:32 gandolf modprobe: can't locate module char-major-5
> 
> Dec 31 23:49:05 gandolf modprobe: can't locate module block-major-3

	The above messages show that you didn't include support for some device that
you need when you compiled the kernel.  The best places to look to see what's missing
are /usr/src/linux/Documentation/devices.txt and /etc/conf.modules.
	A quick glance at those files on my system says that you might need to make
sure you included support for some of the following:
	- serial ports
	- consoles/terminals/tty devices (less likely; if these were missing, you
probably wouldn't have booted at all).
	- block-major-3 supports ide devices; I hope you're booting off a scsi drive!

	There are two reasonable fixes for any of the above messages.  If you _know_
you _don't_ need a particular module, edit /etc/conf.modules (or /etc/modules.conf,
whichever exists) and add the line

alias block-major-385 off

	to tell the kernel module loader to ignore requests for that particular	module.
Replace "block-major-385" with the block-major-whatever, binfmt-whatever,
char-major-whatever, net-pf-whatever, etc. that's giving you error messages.
	If you _do_ need a particular device (in your example, you'll want to use the
serial port someday), recompile the kernel to include serial port support either as a
built-in service or as a module.  You add this support by choosing "Y" or "M" when 
you run through "make menuconfig", "make xconfig" or "make config".  While you _might_
be able to get away with just making serial port support a module and typing

make modules
make install

	, it's safest to do the entire kernel build over again.
	Keep us posted on how it goes.  Cheers,
	- Bill

Resources:
man modprobe

modprobe -c | less
	Spits out the current modprobe configuration.  It's commonly used to create
/etc/conf.modules if that file is missing.  At the very least, it's helpful if you
don't know what a particular char-major-blah should be and want to add it to
conf.modules.

/usr/src/linux/Documentation/devices.txt

ftp://ftp.us.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.2/
	You, obviously, have the kernel sources, but other readers may not know the
best place to get them.  

http://metalab.unc.edu/linux/HOWTO
	The Kernel-HOWTO (and my Buildkernel program) may be useful to other first time
builders of the kernel.

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Unix _is_ user friendly.  It's just very selective about who its friends 
are.  And sometimes even best friends have fights.
William Stearns (wstearns pobox com)
Mason, Buildkernel, and named2hosts are at: http://www.pobox.com/~wstearns
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