Hi all,

I have a embedded Debian that runs in a CF card. Everything was well until intel decided to change the mobo I was using to run my system, and replace it with a new model where the networking card is different. Now they are using a realtek chipset. I have found the driver but I can not compile it in the embedded debian. Can I compile the driver in Knoppix and then somehow copy it to the Debian embedded system? Which would be the steps?

Thanks in advance!

Why can you not compile the driver in the embedded Debian?

Instructions for compiling the module are in the readme file in the driver tar ball.

The embedded Debian runs on a 64MB CF Card, and I had to trim a lot of stuff to make it fit in that space. Among the trimmed stuff were the sources and most of the compiling utilities (plus documentation and many other stuff).

At the prices of 1gig CF cards (newegg has some for $8) put in a 1gb (or larger) with the full install. Make the driver and if you need to, transfer the driver over to the smaller card.

We custom designed the OS with a very limited group of services to make it really stable, it just does Samba file serving and a mini_http server to serve some CGIs, all this is just serving in a corporate intranet, no internet. All the other services were swept and just the basics to start the system were kept. We just need to get that NIC driver compiled and copy it to the embedded system. Any option other than buy a CF card and install a full new Debian OS?

Look you only have to install the full version on one machine one time. You should just be able to add the .deb packages to your current OS (on the new card). The entire thing should take you less than a couple of hours. The other advantage to doing it this way is that the next time something like this pops up, you just whip out your full install cf card and boom you are good to go.

Your other option would be to set up a cross compiler on a desktop. That can be a buttload of work(days).

Just thinking out loud here, but I wonder....

What about making a small partition on the sysadmins desktop, and dd the embedded Debian to that partition. Then set up the bootloader to boot it, or chroot into it. Add in whatever you need to be able to compile the module. Then copy the module to the CF card and run /sbin/depmod -a.

Would that work?

Well, I found a solution, I did run knoppix (where the realtek network card works), and looked for the driver it was using (realtek r8169), then I searched the r8169.ko file and copied it to my embedded system where all the modules are located (keeping the same folder structure it had in Knoppix). Then I run debmod -a and included the module in the module.conf so it can be loaded at boot time. It worked

The knoppix had the same kernel version as my embedded Debian, this is a must for the module to work. Otherwise the module won't work.

This was a quick fix, and I was lucky that the module was already compiled in Knoppix. But if the driver was not included in Knoppix, I could not had made it work. So right now I am gonna try to compile another driver in Knoppix and then copy it to the embedded system.

Hi,

anybody has any idea about how to compile a kernel in Knoppix and the copy it to another system (in this case my embedded system)?

I need to compile support for the new Intel ICH9 chipsets and I think these are only included in the newer kernels?

Thanks!