I think the easier thing to do would be for Pat to include this "fix" into an entirely new kernel-source-smp-*.tgz package??? Of course this won't happen because he likes to distribute unmodified source. Just a thought.

I knew this would be a problem the moment I installed the SMP kernel package.

G

Thank you, agx !!!

I had a similar problem loading the gspca driver for the webcam on my slack 2.6.17.13-smp. I followed your instructions and the problem was solved.

Thanks again.

hi all.just registed and trying to solve the problems i have following the guide posted here by agx.

I had two problems, first the 'version.h' file didnt exist att all before I used 'make' according to the guide. Then it showed up...

Second, when I try use the nvidia instaler it stops on compile errors, link to log below:

www-akejo-org / nvidia-installer.log ( cant post urls..)

EDIT:Update... I recompiledthe kernel, did make install, make modules_install and rebooted, tried nvdia again and this time it worked. X is up and running with nvidia drivers.

My questions now is instead 'What happened?' and have I perhaps broken the instalation somewhere? nothing seems to be protesting when I do 'dmesg'.

As its a fresh install of slackware I rather like to reinstall if there's a possibillity something is broken..

Not broken. You just failed to follow the instructions when you were asked what kernel to install.

Since you were interested in SMP, I'm assuming you installed a 2.6.x level kernel, AND DID NOT INSTALL THE MODULES AS THE INSTALLER WARNED YOU TO.

Yep. It wasn't broke. It did exactly what it would do if you failed to follow the instructions.


How can I tell? No 'version.h' file, then it "appeared" when you compiled (made the modules). Also "fresh install" is another tip-off.

A cheap lesson learned....

It seems to me you asumed I chose the smp kernel while I installed Slackware and problems came from there. This was not the case as I installed the dist completely with the kernel used form the installation. And that worked fine.

Actually...

When I had installed Slackware rebooted and mounted the cd again I did go to the /extra library and used instpkg on both the general and the modules files.. Not knowing that an absence of an 'ok' message might mean 'ops didnt work' I continued with the guide..

I did even go back to the cd and tried reinstall modules once again, and got no errors thrown at me.

But only after compiling and installing kernel and modules it worked.

Anyways.. Thanks for the answer. I only wanted to know if I broke something, not if any installation or guide was broken..

Ok, i've just studied this solution and here are the parts i don't follow.

First, i couldn't find a way to upgrade my kernel to 2.6 instead of the 2.4 that came with the slack 11 dvd.

I can't find /extra either on my dvd or on my machine. I looked it up in kernel.org and apparently the newest version up until now is 2.6.19.2, i tried downloading that one but it downloads a patch, not kernel files.

I am not sure what the config file is. since the numbers there are the ones of the kernel that i don't have installed yet.

Now, the 'make oldconfig' part, is this text literally what i have to type or is oldconfig supposed to be substituted with another file that has the old config?

Hi. Despite beeing new'ish I can post how I found the stuff.

When you have mounted the cd(In my case to '/mnt/cdrom') the linux packages should be(IF same cd I got.. ) in /mnt/cdrom/extra/linux-smp-2.6.17.13 and for the non-smp ones in /mnt/cdrom/extra/linux-2.6.17.13. Those can be added using the installpkg tool.

At kernel .org the latest kernel sources should be at
ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kerne...6.19.2.tar.bz2

The sources on the cd should be under the /mnt/cdrom/extra/source

The 'make oldconfig' should be typed as it says. When you have copied,according to the guide, the config file from the /boot directory to the new kernel source directory you type 'make oldconfig' to direct make to configure the kernel using an old configuration(The one you copied from /boot) file instead of making a new configuration.

Looks like I'm a little late to the party, and everything's working fine now? If so, great.

I agree, from the error messages it appears that the 2.6.17.13-smp kernel modules package was not installed at the time the nvidia compiler ran. Doing a complete kernel build would also create the missing modules and related files, solving the problem. Installing the appropriate kernel-modules package would also do it.

Don't feel too bad - the instructions are confusing, and assume an understanding of the kernel that most people just don't have (and why would they?). I didn't get it right the first time either. Glad you're up and running now.

Oh, and the reason that there's no specific 2.6.17.13 source code package is because it's the exact same source code as the non-SMP version. The only differences are the .config file and the include/linux/version.h file. Neither of those two files exist in the vanilla kernel source: The .config is generated when the user runs "make config" or "make menuconfig" to configure the kernel manually, or runs "make oldconfig" to import a .config file from an older kernel version. The version.h file is generated/updated by the kernel's make utility when the kernel (or any part of it) is compiled. Another 160MB tarball just to install two text files that combine to about 14K seems a bit excessive. Just an extra note in the instructions that say to do the "make inlcude/linux/version.h" trick before installing a third-party driver would suffice.

Just for completeness, the vanilla kernel does have SMP support, bit it's turned off by default (this might change in the future as multi-core CPUs become standard). Pat doesn't modify the kernel source code in any way, but his source packages do include the various generated files that were created when he built the kernel and kernel-modules packages. In the case of the 2.6.17.13-smp source, Pat's configuration that you import via "make oldconfig" has two differences from the non-SMP config: He says "Yes" to the "SMP support?" question (obviously), and he also adds a custom tag ("-smp") to the version number. It's that last one that is the source of the problem that this thread addresses, since doing a "make oldconfig" does not update the version.h file to reflect the added "-smp" tag. That doesn't happen until you build something (anything!) from the kernel source, however trivial it might be. A single module will suffice, and when I noticed that you can tell the kernel's make utility to build a single module, I thought that maybe you could tell it to just build the new version.h and be done with it. And indeed you can.

Hope this helps someone - I'll keep watching this thread.

I have terrible news!!!

This is just not working out for me. The manuals make everything look so easy, when in reality, they just don't work.

I am following the instructions on this one:
http://www.slackbasics.org/html/kernel.html

I get the following error when attempting to run the make oldconfig command. I pasted the first 2 steps i did, so you can see that i am just doing what the manual says:
HELP PLEASE!!!!!

I need to get this 2.6 smp kernel because the nvidia installer is somewhat confused without it.

Might help if you spell it correctly

make menuconfig

not


make menuconifg

root@slackbox:/usr/src/linux-smp-2.6.17.13# make menuconfig
make: *** No rule to make target `menuconfig'. Stop.

I don't think it gets passed the make part.


There's something else missing that make doesn't exist. The manuals don't say anything about having to have something special installed to be able to run make.

Why nbot just go to appropriate directory on the cd/dvd, install the smp kernel, and install the modules?

No compiling required... Just "installpkg <filename>.tgz

I would be glad to do that. But i was just flip-flopping around the instructions on the manuals, usually they are very standard and clear, but not this time. I also want to learn to do this very difficult endeavour. Right now, i got a kernel panic with both the new and the old kernel versions, something about 'not syncing - unable to mount root fs in unknown-block()', i am searching for answers.

You are using Reiserfs fs?

Then you need to use an initrd file. (Look in /boot for instructions)

Ok, sounds good. Lets look into it. initrd right?