Troubleshooting Newly Compiled Kernel
 

I have recently compiled kernel 2.6.9. I have gotton the system to boot, but there are several little annoyances. I'm hoping that you guys will help me work through them.

1. Slackware 10.1 was the distribution I was using. The tty's were set to have a resolution of 1024 by 768. After installing the new bzImage, the resolution changes for a brief moment but then goes back to 80 by 25 characters. As far as I know nothing has changed in the rc scripts. What should I look at to help solve the problem?

2. I believe I have built DMA accesss into the kernel for ATA hard drives. Yet, on boot fsck complains that DMA access is off. What should I check to help solve the problem?

I hesitate to post my .config file that I used to compile the kernel because of length. However, if that's what you need, I will copy the file here immediatly. Let me know of any other information that you need. Thanks in advance.

1. Did you enable framebuffer support in the kernel? Do you still get the Tux picture during bootup?

2. Did you enable support for your specific ATA chipset? I use an Asus Nforce2 motherboard, I had to enable Silicon Image support to get SATA working. What does "hdparm -Tt (harddrive)" report?

Thanks for the advice. The DMA problem was solved. I had to enable Intel PIIx support. The name is kind of confusing. In windows, my ATA driver is called Intel(R) 82801DB. Any ways the Intel PIIx support worked.
I did enable frame buffer support, and I do get the Tux picture on startup. This is the message from the last boot recorded in /var/log/syslog.

Jul 3 04:47:09 Blacktop kernel: Linux version 2.4.29 (root@midas) (gcc version 3.3.4) #6 Thu Jan 20 16:30:37 PST 2005
Jul 3 04:47:09 Blacktop kernel: BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 00000000000a0000 (usable)
Jul 3 04:47:09 Blacktop kernel: BIOS-e820: 00000000000f0000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
Jul 3 04:47:09 Blacktop kernel: BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 000000001ff75000 (usable)
Jul 3 04:47:09 Blacktop kernel: BIOS-e820: 000000001ff75000 - 000000001ff77000 (ACPI NVS)
Jul 3 04:47:09 Blacktop kernel: BIOS-e820: 000000001ff77000 - 000000001ff98000 (ACPI data)
Jul 3 04:47:09 Blacktop kernel: BIOS-e820: 000000001ff98000 - 0000000020000000 (reserved)
Jul 3 04:47:09 Blacktop kernel: BIOS-e820: 00000000fec00000 - 00000000fec10000 (reserved)
Jul 3 04:47:09 Blacktop kernel: BIOS-e820: 00000000fee00000 - 00000000fee10000 (reserved)
Jul 3 04:47:09 Blacktop kernel: BIOS-e820: 00000000ffb00000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)
Jul 3 04:47:09 Blacktop kernel: On node 0 totalpages: 130933
Jul 3 04:47:09 Blacktop kernel: zone(0): 4096 pages.
Jul 3 04:47:09 Blacktop kernel: zone(1): 126837 pages.
Jul 3 04:47:09 Blacktop kernel: zone(2): 0 pages.
Jul 3 04:47:09 Blacktop kernel: Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=Linux ro root=302
Jul 3 04:47:09 Blacktop kernel: Detected 2392.094 MHz processor.
Jul 3 04:47:09 Blacktop kernel: Console: colour dummy device 80x25
Jul 3 04:47:09 Blacktop kernel: Calibrating delay loop... 4771.02 BogoMIPS
Jul 3 04:47:09 Blacktop kernel: Page-cache hash table entries: 131072 (order: 7, 524288 bytes)
Jul 3 04:47:09 Blacktop kernel: CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.40GHz stepping 07
Jul 3 04:47:09 Blacktop kernel: POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
Jul 3 04:47:09 Blacktop kernel: mtrr: v1.40 (20010327) Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.csiro.au)
Jul 3 04:47:09 Blacktop kernel: mtrr: detected mtrr type: Intel
Jul 3 04:47:09 Blacktop kernel: PCI: Probing PCI hardware (bus 00)
Jul 3 04:47:09 Blacktop kernel: Transparent bridge - Intel Corp. 82801BA/CA/DB/EB PCI Bridge
Jul 3 04:47:09 Blacktop kernel: Initializing RT netlink socket
Jul 3 04:47:09 Blacktop kernel: Starting kswapd
Jul 3 04:47:09 Blacktop kernel: Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 128x48
Jul 3 04:47:09 Blacktop kernel: pty: 512 Unix98 ptys configured
Jul 3 04:47:09 Blacktop kernel: lspci -vv, this message (14e4,4212,1028,0002)
Jul 3 04:47:09 Blacktop kernel: and the manufacturer and name of serial board or modem board
Jul 3 04:47:09 Blacktop kernel: to serial-pci-info@lists.sourceforge.net.
...

I tried to change the resolution from 80x25 to a different resolution. It seems that the console did not even get the message because of the colour dummy device 80x25. However, I think Slackware is using something other than lilo to change the resolution on startup. In the original lilo.conf file they write:

# VESA framebuffer console @ 1024x768x64k
vga = 790
# Normal VGA console
# vga = normal
# VESA framebuffer console @ 1024x768x64k
# vga=791
# VESA framebuffer console @ 1024x768x32k
# vga=790
# VESA framebuffer console @ 1024x768x256
# vga=773
# VESA framebuffer console @ 800x600x64k
# vga=788

Are they using another program that connects to lilo or is this normal?