Install Firewire Drive on RHEL 4 - 2.6.9-42.EL-i686
 

Hello,

I'm fairly new to Linux. I have installed RHEL 4 (2.6.9-42.EL) and need to connect a Firewire drive. I have physically installed the Firewire card and hooked it up to the Lacie Big Disk Extreme Firewire drive.

Rebooting the computer doesn't cause kudzu to come up and detect the drive, as it did when I put in an Ethernet card or a USB-Ethernet adapter.

Any help will be appreciated. I understand that I may have to recompile the kernel. If you'd please point me to any link that provides a step by step ("for dummies") instruction set, that would really help me out.

Thanks,

Do yourself a favor, unplug the firewire device from the system, wait about 10 seconds then plug the device in. What does the tail of /var/log/messages say about the device??

As root type something like; tail /var/log/messages

Do you have the firewire modules installed??

cat /proc/modules | ieee1394

If no then as root try installing them; modprobe ieee1384

Rebuilding the kernel is fairly easy, but Red Hat has made this a little bit harder, first the kernel re-build link;

http://www.digitalhermit.com/linux/K...ild-HOWTO.html

Now for the Red Hat you need to get the kernel src.rpm file (the latest is);

ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linu...0.3.EL.src.rpm

After downloading the kernel source package you need to install it(as root of course);

rpm -ivh kernel*.rpm

Then you need to prep the source;
cd /usr/src/redhat/SPECS
rpmbuild -bp --target $(arch) kernel-2.6.spec

You can find additional information here, yes I know it is for Fedora Core 4 but it does apply;

http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/releas...ata/#sn-kernel

Then you can rebuild the kernel, the steps in order (and yes they differ a little bit from the kernel rebuild guide but they are the steps to take);

make mrproper
make menuconfig
make
make modules_install
make install

The 'make menuconfig' step is where you would make the changes to add support for firewire and maybe the device.

If you want an rpm of this new custom kernel then when done building and testing go back and as root type something like; make rpm

.

Lenard,

Thank you for the directions.

Unplugged the firewire device from the system, waited about 10 seconds then plugged the device in. Nothing logged to /var/log/messages at all.


cat /proc/modules | ieee1394

grepping 1394 on /proc/modules returns null.


If no then as root try installing them; modprobe ieee1384

Executing this returns: FATAL: Module ieee1394 not found.


Am downloading the kernel.src.rpm file and will follow your instructions. Will post results once I get through the kernel re-build and check things out.

Thanks,

Use the command 'lspci -v' as guude to which hardware devices you need to make sure you have support for in the new custom kernel.

Hello,

I have compiled the kernel after choosing the appropriate options under make xconfig.

IEEE 1394 (FireWire) support
OHCI-1394 support
SBP-2 support (Harddisks etc.)
Enable Phys DMA support for SBP2 (Debug)

When I now try to look for the sbp2 module, by typing # modprobe sbp2 I get the response "FATAL: Module sbp2 not found."

Running kudzu doesn't detect the Firewire drive.

cat /proc/modules | grep 1394 returns null.

Under the directory /usr/src/redhat/BUILD/kernel-2.6.9/linux-2.6.9, I find the following files pertinent to sbp2.

./include/config/ieee1394/sbp2
./drivers/ieee1394/sbp2.h
./drivers/ieee1394/sbp2.o
./drivers/ieee1394/sbp2.ko
./drivers/ieee1394/sbp2.mod.o
./drivers/ieee1394/sbp2.mod.c
./drivers/ieee1394/sbp2.c

Based on the timestamp against sbp2.o, sbp2.mod.c, sbp2.mod.o and sbp2.ko, I can tell they were recreated at the time of the kernel compile.

Executing lspci -v shows me that I have the FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB82AA2 IEEE-1394b Link Layer Controller.

Thanks,

I find that there is a directory ieee1394 under /usr/src/redhat/BUILD/kernel-2.6.9/linux-2.6.9/drivers. Under this directory, some of the files I find are ieee1394.o, ohci1394.o, pcilynx.o and sbp2.o.

However, I don't find the ieee1394 directory under /lib/modules/2.6.9-42.EL/kernel/drivers.

Trying to modprobe any of ieee1394, ohci1394 or sbp2 results in a "FATAL: Module ... not found" error.

You should have and be running the new kernel you built (something like kernel-2.6.9-42.0.3.EL-prep), please check and make sure; name -a

If not then boot to this new kernel, you have to select this yourself when the grub splash screen is displayed.

The firewire modules should be in /lib/modules/2.6.9-42.0.3.EL-prep location, check.

You might want to try one of the CentOS plus kernels also, for example;

$ rpm -qlip kernel-2.6.9-42.0.3.plus.c4.i686.rpm | grep 1394
/lib/modules/2.6.9-42.0.3.plus.c4/kernel/drivers/ieee1394
/lib/modules/2.6.9-42.0.3.plus.c4/kernel/drivers/ieee1394/amdtp.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.9-42.0.3.plus.c4/kernel/drivers/ieee1394/cmp.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.9-42.0.3.plus.c4/kernel/drivers/ieee1394/dv1394.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.9-42.0.3.plus.c4/kernel/drivers/ieee1394/eth1394.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.9-42.0.3.plus.c4/kernel/drivers/ieee1394/ieee1394.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.9-42.0.3.plus.c4/kernel/drivers/ieee1394/ohci1394.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.9-42.0.3.plus.c4/kernel/drivers/ieee1394/pcilynx.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.9-42.0.3.plus.c4/kernel/drivers/ieee1394/raw1394.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.9-42.0.3.plus.c4/kernel/drivers/ieee1394/sbp2.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.9-42.0.3.plus.c4/kernel/drivers/ieee1394/video1394.ko

The kernels can be found here;

http://isoredirect.centos.org/centos/4.4/centosplus/

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