Hi,

You state your hardware is ancient. What is the specs' of the equipment?

You cannot compare the Linux kernel with windows. One the kernel should operate on your hardware. The kernel is distributed as i486 generally. Your resources /process will depend still on your hardware and how you configure the kernel. If you are basing the situation on your hardware then the stock kernel will still depend on the modules and configuration of the system.

As for the footprint of the kernel. What is the the problem?

1.3 MB vs 1.6 MB for the kernels is not that big of a difference.

As for backwards compatibility, for standard devices. I don't see a problem since the devices migrate fairly well. Unlike a MS orphan problem. As an GNU/Linux we have a lot of options open to the public, with driver availability growing steadily. I've got a lot of older hardware that I still use the new kernels with. Sure there is some investment of time on my part but the rewards out weigh the effort.

ALSA is part of the 2.6 kernel. You don't need to reinstall ALSA unless you just installed a Slackware kernel.

If you state what your USB problems are we might be able to help you.

So please tell us if you compiled your own kernel or installed Pat's? That will help us know how to help you, also.

Hmm... alsa conf did not work after I upgraded the Kernel. I can see the module for my sound card though. The instruction indicated that I had to installed the alsa package for it to work.

Kernel installed via. packages from the disc2.

USB problem:
1. I can see the USB using lspci.
2. Kernel 2.4 do not have usb kernel ring buffer messages on startup. Kernel 2.6 does. However, none of the USB works on bootup. Plugging devices to the USB bus generates no messages in dmesg.
3. By installing ohci and uhci and the usb-storage drivers, I managed to get usb messages to appear in the dmesg. Now when I plug in a USB drive, I get a message that device connect and is listed as /dev/sda. I did fdisk -l on the device and it said that the device is fat16 for the camera and fat32 for the external drive.

I attempted to mount both drive as vfat volumes, but mount complained that the format is incorrect.

Note sure why. May be Fuji FinePix A303 is not really a vfat16 volume. May be Linux can't mount Windows Fat32 hard drive.

4. Even with the drive working. lsusb never return anything. lsusb -v returns nothing either.

Mount point is created.

lsusb never returns anything. lsusb -v neither. This is even though I can see in dmesg that /dev/sda has mounted and that I can get the device info using fdisk -l. Even though I can get info on the drive, lsusb returns nothing.

Since you installed the Slackware 2.6 kernel rather than kernel.org source, you will also have to install the alsa-* packages for the kernel you installed. After installing them, issue as user "alsamixer" and unmute and turn up your volumes, then press Esc to exit. Next, issue as root "alsactl store" to save your settings.

As for the USB issues, UHCI is USB 1.0 (1.1) for Intel and VIA chipsets; OHCI is USB 1.0 (1.1) for others. EHCI is USB 2.0 for all chipsets.

When you say "By installing ohci and uhci and the usb-storage drivers" -- how did you do this?

You'll need to show the commands you used to attempt the mounting of the devices. A simple method if you're using KDE is to plug in the device, then click on the "System" icon on the desktop. Then choose Storage Media and then just click on the device. I'm new to using KDE, but that just works. If you have trouble, perhaps you need to create mount points for the devices. I have these in /etc/fstab:
That allows two devices to be mounted read/write as user. KDE does not seem to use those mount points.

You can see the messages from plugging in and then removing two USB flash disks on this system. The first one is a USB 1.1, and the second one a USB 2.0.

That's weird, are you sure you have usbfs mounted? (should be on /proc/bus/usb).

Here's what I get when I do a lspci

lspci | grep USB
00:04.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 10)
00:04.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 10)
00:0d.0 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB (rev 41)
00:0d.1 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB (rev 41)
00:0d.2 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB 2.0 (rev 02)

OK, so there is VIA USB 1.0 and NEC USB2.0. I load all three modules

modprobe ehci-hcd
modprobe uhci-hcd
modprobe ohci-hcd

dmesg indicate that the drivers loaded OK and can find the usb

ub 2-0:1.0: USB hub found
hub 2-0:1.0: 2 ports detected
ohci_hcd: 2005 April 22 USB 1.1 'Open' Host Controller (OHCI) Driver (PCI)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:0d.0[A] -> Link [LNKD] -> GSI 9 (level, low) -> IRQ 9
ohci_hcd 0000:00:0d.0: NEC Corporation USB
ohci_hcd 0000:00:0d.0: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 3
ohci_hcd 0000:00:0d.0: irq 9, io mem 0xdd000000
hub 3-0:1.0: USB hub found
hub 3-0:1.0: 3 ports detected
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:0d.1[B] -> Link [LNKA] -> GSI 11 (level, low) -> IRQ 11
ohci_hcd 0000:00:0d.1: NEC Corporation USB (#2)
ohci_hcd 0000:00:0d.1: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 4
ohci_hcd 0000:00:0d.1: irq 11, io mem 0xdc800000
usb 3-2: new full speed USB device using ohci_hcd and address 2
hub 4-0:1.0: USB hub found
hub 4-0:1.0: 2 ports detected
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:0d.2[C] -> Link [LNKB] -> GSI 10 (level, low) -> IRQ 10
ehci_hcd 0000:00:0d.2: NEC Corporation USB 2.0
ehci_hcd 0000:00:0d.2: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 5
ehci_hcd 0000:00:0d.2: irq 10, io mem 0xdc000000
ehci_hcd 0000:00:0d.2: USB 2.0 initialized, EHCI 0.95, driver 10 Dec 2004
hub 5-0:1.0: USB hub found
hub 5-0:1.0: 5 ports detected
usb 5-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
usb 3-2: USB disconnect, address 2
usb 5-3: USB disconnect, address 2

Plugging in device shows that the system recognize the device but does not show that it is a storage device.

usb 5-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 4

Try loading modprobe usb-storage next.

This time, I get better output from dmesg:

Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
scsi0 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
usb-storage: device found at 4
usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
usbcore: registered new driver usb-storage
USB Mass Storage support registered.
Vendor: ST380020 Model: A Rev: 3.39
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 00
SCSI device sda: 156301488 512-byte hdwr sectors (80026 MB)
sda: assuming drive cache: write through
SCSI device sda: 156301488 512-byte hdwr sectors (80026 MB)
sda: assuming drive cache: write through
sda: sda1 sda4
Attached scsi disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
usb-storage: device scan complete
usb 5-3: USB disconnect, address 4
usb 5-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 5
scsi1 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
usb-storage: device found at 5
usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
usb 5-3: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 5

So let's see what's on the external drive:

fdisk -l /dev/sda


Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
61 heads, 35 sectors/track, 73209 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2135 * 512 = 1093120 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 73209 78150068+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda4 1 667946 713031680 0 Empty
Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary.

OK, I try to mount it. I create a usbhd in /mnt and try a mount
mount -t vfat /dev/sda /mnt/usbhd
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda,
missing codepage or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so

dmesg said:

FAT: bogus number of FAT structure
VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev sda.

Syslog isn't much help either:

Apr 28 17:49:32 playtpus kernel: FAT: bogus number of FAT structure
Apr 28 17:50:33 playtpus kernel: FAT: bogus number of FAT structure

I am actually not familar with KDE and how it mounts things. Still, if it doesn't work with command line, something must be wrong?

You are trying to mount the entire disk.
You must mount individual partitions.
Try "mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/usbhd"
Still you have something amiss with /dev/sda4:

OK, here's what I get when I plug in the drive. AS you can see, the usb drive is seen:

usb 5-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 7
scsi3 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
usb-storage: device found at 7
usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
Vendor: ST380020 Model: A Rev: 3.39
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 00
SCSI device sda: 156301488 512-byte hdwr sectors (80026 MB)
sda: assuming drive cache: write through
SCSI device sda: 156301488 512-byte hdwr sectors (80026 MB)
sda: assuming drive cache: write through
sda: sda1 sda4
Attached scsi disk sda at scsi3, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
usb-storage: device scan complete

OK, so what it is, try fdisk -l /dev/sda


Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
61 heads, 35 sectors/track, 73209 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2135 * 512 = 1093120 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 73209 78150068+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda4 1 667946 713031680 0 Empty
Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary.

So the drive is there, so let's mount it, there is a mount point at /mnt I created:

ls /mnt
cdrom/ floppy/ hd/ usbhd/

Mounting it:
mount -t vfat /dev/sda /mnt/usbhd
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda,
missing codepage or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so

What does dmesg say:

FAT: bogus number of FAT structure
VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev sda.

What does syslog say:

Apr 28 17:55:55 playtpus kernel: sda: assuming drive cache: write through
Apr 28 17:55:55 playtpus kernel: sda: assuming drive cache: write through
Apr 28 17:58:29 playtpus kernel: FAT: bogus number of FAT structure

What does lsusb -v say:

nothing at all.

What does /proc/bus/usb?

Nothing in that directory. So the driver sees the device, but I can't mount it. Why?

Your not mounting a partition and so no valid filesystem. Use /dev/sda1

Ah, that worked. Disk is now mounted.

Note sure what the sda4 is though. I think Windows may have installed some weird partition on the hard disk.

Thanks.

Wierd that lsusb still returns nothing. I wonder if there's something amissed with my configuration.

Yep, tried that and it now works!

But lsusb is not returning anything. Is there anything amissed with my config?

Paul

I would guess that your usbfs is not mounted.
On my computer, it is hotplug that mounts the usbfs. If you're not using hotplug, try adding
to your "/etc/fstab" file. Then reboot, or just run
Eric

It looks like you're already on your way, but I'll add my comments for the benefit of others considering taking the plunge.

My own experience with the 2.6 kernel has been very positive. Not too long ago, I also decided to install Patrick's official /testing kernel (version 2.6.15.6, to be exact). The initial setup was pretty simple. The toughest part was using mkinitrd to bake a boot image. But the available README file made this straightforward.

I did notice a performance benefit with 2.6. Another interesting (?) side-effect was 2.6 seems to free memory more efficiently. With 2.4, once the system memory was used, it seemed to hold alot of information in cache. The cache fingerprint in 2.6 seems smaller.

I don't use USB on my Slack system, so I can't speak to that subject.

My system is a P3/933 with 768MB SDRAM.

Garry

paulsiu,

You should not have been posting for the same help in two threads.

paulsiu's other thread for this problem

Read 'em again, if you ever did at first...