can't reinstall soundcard after customizing kernel
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All the make and compilation steps in the soundcard installation recipe complete as usual with no errors with my customized kernel. When I do the last step, however:
I have no clue here. All I can think of is that something is disabled in my new kernel, but I built that by starting with the original config and only ADDING things to it. Any ideas?
Post the output of "lsmod". Also, see if you can go back to your original config and compile that again to see if your sound card will work. If it does then you know it's definetly something you added. If not then we'll have to get creative.
i booted to my old kernel and the soundcard worked. I've never compiled my kernels before, just always do redhat up2date. This is my first custom kernel, and I got a bootable one on the second try, which I'm happy enough about. When I created the config for the new kernel, I started from a file that was identcal to my (at that time) current config, double-checked with diff.
Hmmm... Red Hat likes to patch the kernels they give out with... whatever it is they patch it with. I never use RH so I don't know what the patches are. I'm not sure if that's even publically available information.
I see you're using the alsa drivers... As I see it you've go two options. Either stick with a red hat kernel (dunno if I like that option but you might) or try see if the official alsa instructions are any different and try those.
Also, you might want to try "modprobe -v <module>". The output of your modprobe is rather reticent this will print all commands as they are executed and may give a clue as to what actually fails.
Unfortunately, I need to stick with RedHat out of fear that I will be getting even further out of my depth. My other option is to try bothering the guy who made the ALSA patch for this soundcard (link to the recipe I'm following posted in my first post above), but I happen to know he doesn't use RH either.
modprobe -v snd-echoaudio didn't help much:
/sbin/insmod /lib/modules/2.4.20-20.9custom/kernel/sound/acore/snd.o
Using /lib/modules/2.4.20-20.9custom/kernel/sound/acore/snd.o
Symbol version prefix ''
/lib/modules/2.4.20-20.9custom/kernel/sound/acore/snd.o: unresolved symbol schedule_work
/lib/modules/2.4.20-20.9custom/kernel/sound/acore/snd.o: insmod /lib/modules/2.4.20-20.9custom/kernel/sound/acore/snd.o failed
/lib/modules/2.4.20-20.9custom/kernel/sound/acore/snd.o: insmod snd-echoaudio failed
lspci lists:
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 82850 850 (Tehama) Chipset Host Bridge (MCH) (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82850 850 (Tehama) Chipset AGP Bridge (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82801BA/CA/DB PCI Bridge (rev 02)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82801BA ISA Bridge (LPC) (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82801BA IDE U100 (rev 02)
00:1f.2 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801BA/BAM USB (Hub #1) (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corp. 82801BA/BAM SMBus (rev 02)
00:1f.4 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801BA/BAM USB (Hub #2) (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Matrox Graphics, Inc. MGA G400 AGP (rev 85)
02:06.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
02:0a.0 Multimedia controller: Motorola: Unknown device 3410
02:0b.0 Multimedia controller: Sigma Designs, Inc. REALmagic Hollywood Plus DVD Decoder (rev 02)
My card is the Motorola unknown device, and lspci gives this same result even when I've booted from my original kernel that the soundcard works under.
I also check the status with "cat /proc/bus/pci/devices", which doesn't show the device in the custom kernel, but does in the orig.
I just got an email on the ALSA list from a guy with the same problem. The name of his kernel is 2.4.20-new2. My kernel is named 2.4.20-20.9custom, but the driver works for me under my old kernel which is named 2.4.20-20.9. I wonder if the added characters at the end of the kernel name cause a problem, so I'll try fixing that.
There seems to be a lesson here. I recently converted from Windows and Mac. Linux (RH9 anyways) worked great out-of-the-box on my laptop and server, but it's a completly different story on my home desktop system that has extra fun hardware goodies attached. For example, my HP LaserJet/fax prints fine, but I've never been able to get the scanning working with Linux, despite much research and effort. My graphics card (Matrox) displays fine, but I'm still working on enabling it to display an external signal in Linux, and am proceeding slowly through that recipe, which is why I had to recompile my kernel. The soundcard recipe is rather involved for a newbie; I get it working, but then it fails due to this inexplicable side effect of adding unrelated kernel options. I haven't even tried to burn a CD, and I anticipate I'm cruisin for a bruisin when I try to get my DVD-RAM/R drive working.
The software/office software situation is wonderful, and the serving is so much better than win or mac, and linux is cake on my self-contained laptop, but this situation with peripherals is rather pre-98 Windows-ish. Am I wrong, or should amateur's like me be warned away from linux if they plan to add on even mildly esoteric hardware without a personal guru?
The names of kernels are irrelevant. You can call it "mary_had_a_little_lamb" and it will work fine (assuming it's configured correctly).
With burning CD's, you'll have to enable SCSI emulation. If you didn't compile SCSI support and the module ide-scsi.o in your kernel then you'll have to recompile.
I don't really know a lot about printing/scanning/faxing under linux.
I don't believe newbies should be warned away. If that was the case no one new would ever use linux. Just about everyone on this forum started out just like you. That's what this forum's for. Some people like the more manual approach. Others don't.
I thought maybe a path name was being built upon the kernel name, and the guy who created the audio card patch hadn't taken something into account. I don't know.
thanks for your help--I wasn't intending to ask for help here with scanning and whatever, just feeding back on my experience up to now with linux. You can't beat the helpful community that comes with linux, on boards like this, mailing lists, etc. But I deal with a lot of friends/users who are freaked out by having to log in to something instead of having their computer boot to a desktop! There's no way those types should be encouraged to switch to linux if they intend to integrate too many or recalcitrant peripherals. I'd recommend a linux retrofit for laptops, but for bigger desktop systems perhaps the way for a newbie to go is to research ahead of time which peripherals are the most popular and most known to work in the linux world, then build a shopping list for their system around that.
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