Recompiled and Installed Kernel 2.6.14.2 - No Modules Loading?
 

Hi everyone, Im pretty new to linux and I seem to have run across a problem. I installed my first distro (Mandrake 10.1 official) about a week ago and have been battling to get my Sound Blaster Live 24-bit working for a few days now. But my question for now is a bit more specific.

I had been trying to install the ca0106 driver that the SBLive uses, and after having several unsuccessful attempts, I decided that I would try to recompile the kernel to a new version (2.6.8.1 to 2.6.14.2) to see if that would help. Sure enough in the make menuconfig there was an option to include the ca0106 module. I went through make menuconfig and make to compile the kernel, and then copied the appropriate System.map and bzImage to the /boot/ folder.

Now I went ahead and restarted with this new kernel and everything seemed to be working pretty good, well except for the sound but I thought I was getting closer. If I ran a modinfo snd-ca0106 it returned some information instead of saying error not found like it did previously. I tried a few more things and they weren't working out so I started to wonder if maybe I messed something up somehow. I then decided that I would try to recompile the new kernel again and start that from scratch. I went ahead and repeated the same steps as before, and rebooted. However this time I think things took a turn for the worse.

Immediately upon booting I got an error about sound not working that I didnt before. (I thought I had saved this message somewhere but it seems to have disappeared.) I then went to command line as root and typed modinfo soundcore: to which returned

[root@192 etc]# modinfo soundcore
modinfo: could not find module soundcore

In my previous kernel it returned info about that module.

Then I tried
[root@192 etc]# modinfo snd-ca0106
modinfo: could not find module snd-ca0106

Finally I just typed lsmod to which it returned:

[root@192 etc]# lsmod
Module Size Used by
[root@192 etc]#

Now I am pretty new to linux but that certainly looks like a bad sign. Before I did my second recompile I had a bunch of modules in that list, and now there is nothing.

I guess my question comes down to do any of you pros have any idea as to what I did to break my install like this? If I had to reformat the distro I wouldn't lose too much sleep over it cause Ive only been using linux a few days now, but I would like to salvage this if I can and mabye learn a little bit in the process. Thanks in advance and I will gladly provide more information if it would help.

Best thing is to post the commands and procedure you did to compile the kernel. Then we can see where you might went wrong. But here is the basic commands.

1. make menuconfig or make config or make xconfig or make gconfig or others.
2. make (to build the kernel and modules)
3. make modules_install ( to install the modules under /lib/modules/kernel-version.)
4. make install (to add to boot manager)
5. Reboot to new kernel

Now if you are added for the sblive you may need to edit /etc/modules.conf or /etc/modprobe.conf and add the sound driver module. Or can be loaded using the modprobe command and inserted in one of the rc files or even create your own init file.

Brian1

To compile I did in this order, from the new linux directory that I unzipped:

make clean
make menuconfig
make
make modules_install
cp arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.14.2
cp System.map /boot/System.map-2.6.14.2

then I opened up lilo.conf and added lines:

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.14.2
label="Linux-Kernel-2.6.14.2"
root=/dev/hda2
read-only

then ran /sbin/lilo and rebooted


To the best of my knowledge I performed the same operations on both of my attempts to install the new kernel.

Oh and also I captured that error message from bootup that I mentioned earlier:
"Sound server informational message:
Error while initializing the sound driver:
device: default can't be opened for playback (Invalid argument)
The sound server will continue, using the null output device."

Make sure you have loadable module support compiled into the kernel. I recommend also that you wait to install your sound card drivers and simply select Sound Card Support in Device Drivers->Sound->Sound Support. Take all the other sound options off. When the kernel has finished compiling, make a symbolic link to the kernel directory. You have compiled the kernel in /usr/src/linux-2.6.14. Type
ln -s linux-2.6.9/ linux
This symbolic link is needed so the sound driver packages can find the kernel source tree.
Goto ALSA's website. Download the alsa-drivers package and the alsa-utils package. If you have a card like mine, you will want to compile the alsa-drivers package with a make command like:
./configure --with-cards=ca0106 --with-sequencer=yes
make
make install
./snddevices
The ./configure command make a makefile so that only driver for you card are compiled. You know what the two commands in the middles do. The ./snddevices creates the necessary sound devices in the dev directory.
With the alsa-utils the commands are more simple
./configure
make install
When all that's done, find the alsaconf package in the alsa-utils package. Type
alsaconf
Answer the questions and hope it detects your sound card. If the configurer did not adjust the volume, you should run the mixer. That is also in the alsa-utils package. Adjust the volume so that master and PCM are not muted. Possible other channels need to be unmuted, but I'm doing this from memory. Startx and listen to sweet tunes! Good luck.

I have got "Enable loadable module support" checked in the menuconfig.

Is there a list of modules to load somewhere that may have gotten deleted or something?

Ill try to do the manual load of the alsa driver later, cause I think ive got bigger problems right now with having no modules. I actually had tried that before I started rebuilding the kernel the first time, but I had never thought to make a symbolic link to the linux folder, and I always tried it with the --with-kernel= option and I had errors every time I tried it.

Good, keep loadable module support in there. You should try to recompile the kernel the way I told you. As far as the list of sound card drivers that have been lost or deleted, my sound card is not listed in the kernel. That's why I had to go to ALSA's website and download all the drivers. Your card may even be listed in the kernel configuration; however, even if you compile the driver into the kernel the sound will not work. You have to run the configuration script from alsa-utils. This is why I say add your sound drivers later.

As an example, when I compiled my sound drivers from the alsa-drivers package, I modprobed all the drivers into the kernel and created a sound device. The sound would not work! The proc directory even listed my sound card. It said emu10k1x DELL Sound Blaster live. There is so much configuration that needs to be done to set the drivers up correctly that the configuration script is your best bet.

Allright Ill give that a try, but even with the loadable modules support I still show no modules...I will try again though. Ill let you know how it goes when I'm done.

Ok I went ahead and recompiled without ALSA. It came back and I was still without any modules when I started up, but I went ahead and installed the alsa drivers anyway.

I got the alsa drivers to install successfully (which I never had gotten to work before), and I also installed the alsa library. However when I went to install the alsa utils I got an error in the make stage.

It went something like this:
Although now when I turn on my speakers I hear white noise coming out all the time, instead of before where I heard nothing.


I am still missing all other modules though. On the alsa homepage it says I need the module "soundcore" which I would assume is pretty important. Hopefully when I get this missing modules problem fixed I will then know how to get sound up and running.

My lsmod now looks like this:
Also thanks for all your help so far.

I rebooted again and found that my music works now!

Ive still got to figure out how I broke my other modules though. Anyone got any more ideas on what happened there?

I use alsa 1.0.9. Try checking the install notes in your package. They should be in a file called INSTALL.

To make sure they are there, are all the modules you want under /lib/modules/2.6.14.2?
Your config may not need it but you can run the mkinitrd command.

Still at a lost here but if I think of something I will post back.
Brian1

There is several files and folders under the folder /lib/modules/2.6.14.2, although I'm not entirely sure even what modules I'm supposed to have, I just know that I have none on lsmod (except for the ones that I just installed from alsa) where as before I had a bunch.

One thing that I do notice is that I see two FAILED's scroll by as I'm booting. It flies by pretty fast and its hard to see exactly what it is, but I noticed that its referring to something with usb, I think they are echd and uchd, and they both say something like "FATAL-Module not...(something)" I also see another two FAILED's during boot, I think for eth0 and eth1, which is odd because I thought those were for my ethernet cards, and my internet still works even though its plugged into eth0.

Is there a log the messages that scroll by during boot? I could look at exactly whats going on with those usb modules, cause I think that it could be related.

I'm also not familiar with the mkinitrd command, sorry.

I found the log I was looking for, here is those errors I mentioned:

"Nov 20 21:22:11 192 modprobe: FATAL: Module uhci-hcd not found.
Nov 20 21:22:11 192 usb: Initializing USB controller (uhci-hcd): failed
Nov 20 21:22:11 192 modprobe: FATAL: Module ehci-hcd not found.
Nov 20 21:22:11 192 usb: Initializing USB controller (ehci-hcd): failed "

The new kernel will only use modules that you supplied in the configuration process. It wont even look at the old modules. If you compile the same kernel twice, the previous modules are erased. You will have to find these USB modules and compile them into the kernel. If you have to recompile the entire kernel again you will have to reinstall ALSA because those modules will be erased. Painful huh?

Aren't at least some of these things supposed to be installed by default? Whenever I look at other people who do lsmod and post it here I see that they have some 50 random modules running, and I have a hard time believing that they installed all of those by hand. I know I had a bunch of modules by default the first time I compiled 2.6.14, although the second time I compiled it I had none. Like for example USB, I know that error that I get during boot I know I didn't have before. I know I checked a lot of checkboxes in the makeconfig menu for different things including usb, so im just wondering where all these things went the second time around. :confused: