Newbie kernel-tweaking wannabe

Yalla-One · 03-30-2005, 01:36 PM

Greetings,

I've ventured into my first ever kernel compilation, trying to upgrade my Slackware 10.1 installation to the 2.6.10 kernel on a HP compaq nc4000 laptop.

I have a couple of question I hope you're sufficiently patient to bear with me on

1. I have trouble finding a 2.6.x kernel HOWTO with the proper mix of newbie friendlyness and indepth cover of what to include in my kernel on my laptop. They're either extremely advanced and lose me on page one, or so generalistic that I am at loss at what to include and what to exclude (for agility)

2. udev doesn't seem to work on the standard 2.4.29, maybe because there is no sysfs going? How do I fix this on 2.6.10?

3. I have a built-in Atheros WLAN 802.11 wireless card - I have downloaded the MADWIFI drivers, but see there's already some WLAN support in the 2.6.10 kernel - how do I know which one to use?

Feeling like an idiot for creating yet another slackware kernel post :S

Any insight greatly appreciated!

-Y1

Yalla-One · 03-30-2005, 01:42 PM

Great - nevermind tweaking the 2.6 kernel.

Having followed the 2.6 kernel thread here I rebooted and instead of LILO was greated L 9A 9A 9A 9A 9A 9A 9A 9A 9A ....9A across half the screen, and then it hangs... Guess I just killed my system, as without LILO, I can't boot either XP or the old kernel...

I think thus to have established once and for all that kernel compilation is slightly beyond beginner-level...

-Y1

Jeebizz · 03-30-2005, 03:42 PM

I'm not entirely sure how you are dual booting, if LILO is on the MBR, or if the WindowsNTLDR is still in the MBR, and you have it load linux from a file. First, since you have done a recompile of the kernel and copied the right files to the /boot directory , lilo must be updated, or you will get the 9A 9A 9A across the screen.

after you have done the recompile, its best to run /sbin/lilo to update the boot record. Assuming that lilo is the main loader, you simply have to reboot, otherwise, if you are using the WindowsNTLDR to boot into linux, you must make a new bootsect.lnx or whatever file you named to load linux. Now, since you are getting the 9A 9A across the screen, I will assume that lilo is the dominant loader, so simply boot into a Linux rescue disk so you can get into a command prompt of linux, and simply re-issue the /sbin/lilo command , and reboot.

Yalla-One · 03-30-2005, 03:48 PM

Ahh, thanks for answering my call for help

I am dualbooting with XP and SLackware, using LILO as boot manager, installed in MBR. Worked fine until I tried to upgrade to kernel 2.6.10 and something went VERY wrong along the way.

Now I get 99 99 99 or 9A 9A 9A errors when I boot, and have thus booted the "recovery CD" and mounted /dev/hda2 (Linux partition) and chroot'ed it.

However, I have done /sbin/lilo 10-15 times, and only get the same error...

I'm now getting slightly desperate as I need the laptop to work at the office first thing tomorrow morning :S

-Y1

geomatt · 03-30-2005, 03:49 PM

See this thread. Did you run lilo after installing the new kernel??

And kernel compiling is not something newbies should avoid (IMO) - I've learned alot by trying it and breaking things and then fixing them

-geomatt

Edit: Jeebizz beat me to it....

Jeebizz · 03-30-2005, 03:50 PM

strange, /sbin/lilo should do , or first you can try to force an uninstall of lilo and retry installing it.. like this..

Code:

/sbin/lilo -U
/sbin/lilo

Also, I hope that you have edited /etc/lilo.conf to point to both old and new kernels, and make sure that prompt is not commented by a #, in order to get a menu

Yalla-One · 03-30-2005, 03:56 PM

geomatt:

Thanks for helping!
So far I've done a lot of breaking and no fixing.

The thread you pointed to didn't really do it as it didn't detail how to find/use the bootsect.lnx and I use lilo in the MBR, not the NT bootloader. (Well, right now strictly speaking I don't use anything as it's broken :S)

Jeebizz:

Will try the -lilo -U

I have both kernels in lilo.conf, but the symlinks were all messed up as power was lost during make install (just my luck) and then in complete absense of any wisdom I tried to fix the symlinks myself, so I assume most in /boot is broken

-Y1

Yalla-One · 03-30-2005, 04:04 PM

Update: Just did a /sbin/lilo -U but still get the 99 99 99 99 on reboot.

While I'm trying my best not to be discouraged from making my own kernel in the future (that is, if I ever get this to work

) it's getting somewhat difficult to keep cheerful

Resorting to XP bootCD in recovery mode and fdisk /MBR - REALLY hope that works

-Y1

egag · 03-30-2005, 04:14 PM

i think with xp tou need " fixmbr " to rewrite it.
also if you can, post your lilo.conf file.
i think there's an error there.....

also , if you apply " lilo -u ", the old mbr will be written back

egag

Yalla-One · 03-30-2005, 04:20 PM

egag,

Just started XP in recovery mode and did a FIXMBR which now gets me straight into XP - perfect -thanks much!

However, I am left with a completely broken Linux partition as I've messed up /boot quite thoroughly (I know, not a smart thing to do, but what's done is done)

Is there any way to fix my /boot directory without completely re-installing slackware ? I suspect my old 2.4.29 kernel is broken too, as my PC died during "make install" and the symlinks were only half-done. Trying to fix things manually was in hindsight not a good idea, and now I have some rather interesting recursive symlinks in /boot.

Have booted from CD with default kernel and need to decide which is quicker, complete re-install or fix /boot ...

Thanks to all the patient LQ-users who helped so far!

Jeebizz · 03-30-2005, 04:27 PM

That sounds good, to restore the NTLDR as the default loader, the way I have my dualboot setup, is that I leave the MBR with the NTLDR, and I have NTLDR load windows or linux, it just seems better that way, in case something like this happens, and you can't get into any system, if lilo is the main loader. Im not sure how to do an install of lilo on a superblock in your linux partition, I usually do it when I am first installing Linux, I hope it won't come down to that, but sometimes that might be the only answer.

If you should decide to reinstall , have linux setup lilo on your linux partition, and keep the MBR unaltered with the windows partition. Also, a good idea, is to setup a relatively small FAT32 partition, so both windows and linux can read/write , maybe about 5GB or so, depending how much hd space you have.

So, if you decided to reinstall, and have installed LILO on superblock of the linux partition, all you need to do is to issue a certain command to copy the 512 bytes of the superblock.. like this..(Assuming you have a fat32 partition and have had linux mount it for you during install

Code:

dd if=/dev/hdaX of=/mnt/fat32/bootsect.lnx bs=1 count=512

NOTE: that is just an example, where X is whatever your linux partiton is, could be hda2 hda3 or whatever, and I don't know if you have a fat32 partition at all Now, you will have a file called bootsect.lnx on the fat32 partiton, reboot into windows, and open a command prompt and issue this command:

Code:

copy d:\bootsect.lnx c:\ 
attrib -r -a -s -h boot.ini
edit boot.ini

now you will be in the edit program within the command prompt, and under the boot.ini, you should see something like this...maybe not exactly like this, keep in mind you might have something a little different, but don't worry..

Code:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

under a new line write this in...

Code:

C:\bootsect.lnx="Slackware Linux" (or just linux if you want

save your changes, and reapply the attribs to boot.ini, +r +a +s +h , and you can also attrib +r +a +s +h bootsect.lnx if you want, don't have to though, and then reboot, and you should be presented with a prompt to choose windows or linux.

Yalla-One · 03-30-2005, 04:35 PM

Thanks again for the insight!

I now got it working with the old-fashioned LILO and I'm up and running 2.6.10 - 2.4 seems gone. I have saved your suggestions regarding a small FAT32 partition in a "useful.tips" file for when I reinstall XP and Linux, but for now I think I'll stick to one broken OS at a time

Currently 2.6.10 works fine except I now have no CDROM support and no audio - but at least I can boot both XP and Linux, so all in all I'm a happy camper, and I guess the lost Cd/sound issues are for another thread!

Thanks much guys!!

syg00 · 03-31-2005, 04:12 AM

Lilo is a crock !!!.
Be aware that *EVERY* time you run lilo (as a command) you will have to screw around re-copying the boot sector record over to your XP partition.

This is precisely the reason I gave up on lilo years ago (NT 3.1, maybe 4) when I used to dual-boot with ntldr.
IMHO Grub is the only viable option.

Yalla-One · 03-31-2005, 04:37 AM

Hi syg00 - which GRUB do you recommend - the legacy one, or grub2 ?

Anything in particular I should be aware of when migrating to grub? I'm in the middle of a massive kernel mess and not very happy with my distro right now...

Nobber · 03-31-2005, 04:47 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Yalla-One
Now I get 99 99 99 or 9A 9A 9A errors when I boot, and have thus booted the "recovery CD" and mounted /dev/hda2 (Linux partition) and chroot'ed it.

However, I have done /sbin/lilo 10-15 times, and only get the same error...

AFAIR, /sbin/lilo doesn't work properly in a chroot'ed environment. However, you can use the Slackware install CD to boot your linux system with /dev/hda2 as the root filesystem, and thus avoid having to chroot. Instructions on how to do this come up on screen just before the boot: prompt.