alsa and kernel upgrades

linuxhippy · 04-05-2005, 04:06 AM

ok, looks like I finally got my laptop working smoothly with Slack-now a new 2.4.30 kernel is out. I just built my kernel to 2.4.29 from 2.4.26 and found that I also had to build alsa for the 2.4.29 kernel in order to get sound. That worked fine (thanks to lots of help from people here) and I was able to get my NIC card working in the process.

I'm thinking about upgrading to the new 2.4.30 kernel. There's also a patch. I don't want to have to rebuild alsa again for 2.4.30. If I patch the 2.4.29 kernel, would I have to rebuild alsa?

Nobber · 04-05-2005, 04:19 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by linuxhippy
If I patch the 2.4.29 kernel, would I have to rebuild alsa?

Yes. At the very least, you'll have to rebuild the alsa modules (in the alsa-driver package).

linuxhippy · 04-05-2005, 07:59 PM

I built alsa from source for my soundcard-it took 10 minutes for 1 card as opposed to a couple hours for all the cards. Not bad! I also built my kernel to 2.4.30 from source rather than patching. I cut more extraneous things out of my kernel config file. After I had the config file, it took 2 hours and 50 minutes to build the kernel, modules, insert the modules, and compile alsa. I have an old 350 MHz K-6 and before it was taking much longer to compile kernels.

I'm figuring this kernel building stuff out!

Oh, alsa has a good soundcard choosing option on their site that tells you exactly how to compile alsa with the option for your specific soundcard: http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/

masonm · 04-05-2005, 09:12 PM

Cool. Sounds like you're ready for a nice 2.6.xx kernel now.

I'm running with the 2.6.10 and no problems.

linuxhippy · 04-06-2005, 03:47 AM

Maybe-it tends to make boot time take longer on my old pc, though (I tried 2.6.10 and 2.6.11.5). That may be because my video and mouse weren't detected correctly.

Can I use my 2.4.30 kernel config as a basis (make oldconfig) for a 2.6.X kernel?

gbonvehi · 04-06-2005, 03:53 AM

You can but it's not recommended since many things changed or where rearranged. Try getting a vanilla config file from the 2.6 kernel in testing/.

linuxhippy · 04-06-2005, 05:29 PM

Where would I get the vanilla conig file? I went here and couln't find it:

ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/testing/

gbonvehi · 04-06-2005, 07:03 PM

Like the one on Slackware's CD 2 in the directory testing/source/linux-2.6.X/config-2.6.X
This is the latest 2.6-X config file (from a slackware-current mirror): ftp://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/d.../config-2.6.11