'Aggressive' Kernel ?

[Auke Kok]

Here's a few comments on your lengthy mail (thanks! we like to hear
stuff like this! Talk to Kenny Mann if you want to talk about first time
lunar experiences)

On Mon, 2003-02-17 at 01:19, Keith Adney wrote:
> Lunar has a single root partition of about 
> 4GB at hda6, and yes I realize that's tight

3.5 and I do all my development work on it. There's no QT/KDE but I
don't need that anyway, I do test gnome2 stuff occasionally.

> ). I configured a 1GB 
> SWAPFILE in the root partition. I also have a 1.5GB HD; I'm using 
> 256MB for the Mandrake swap partition and the rest is a 
> /home/shared partition for common storage w/Mandrake.

Like rick said, we don't really use tmpfs anymore, tho I still put it on
/tmp, /var/tmp and /var/lock to have nice clean reboots without
wondering, but that's just sentimental.

real life: skip tmpfs, take normal swap sizes

>  If anyone 
> thinks its a better way I could always put the swapfile on that 
> drive (but I assume it has to be a swap FILE, within a partition, 
> not a PARTITION, as Mandrake would try to use it if it was a 
> partition?). That would give Lunar another 1GB+ in its root 
> partition.

I've even had swapfiles in VFAT filesystems over pagefile.sys, it's
really cool to have 'mkswap /mnt/c/pagefile.sys && swapon
/mnt/c/pagefile.sys'  in an init script ;^)

> I've installed Lunar via CD-ROM about 5 or 6 times now. The initial 
> install and kernel compile always go fine, but at the end I'm 
> always left with an "aggressive" kernel, ie, 
> "vmlinubz-2.4.20-r1-aggressive" (that is from memory, might not be 
> verbatim but I imagine y'all get the idea).

once you have patched the kernel the source stays behind and will retain
patches of course, maybe you need to wipe it before linning the kernel
again (make sure you don't select the agressive patch and lin -r linux)

>  It boots fine, but when 
> I try to load my NIC module (vanilla NIC which uses the tulip 
> driver and runs fine w/Mandrake), it tells me that the tulip driver 
> was compiled for a vanilla kernel, but I'm using an aggressive 
> kernel...

that means you also have to recompile the tulip driver. In case the
kernel doesn't provide this module you need to drop module versions so
the kernel just bluntly loads them (see make menuconfig). Maybe a
recompile against the newer kernel tree will fix it too it the module
sources see the new linux source tree

> 
> I've fooled w/Linux for some time now, but as most of it is on 
> Mandrake, I've never actually compiled a kernel. ;) I assume I'm 
> incorrectly setting or resetting some option in the kernel config 
> screens, but I have no idea what option(s). Each time I've tried to 
> be more and more "conservative" (as *I* see it!) in my option 
> selections, but the end result's always the same: I can't load my 
> NIC and therefore can't do much except play with bash.

Where do you get your NIC driver from? I'm really wondering now!

> Would it help if I listed all the kernel compile options I selected, 
> or is this a no-brainer for someone who knows Lunar? I'm assuming 
> the latter...

not really, lemme do a wild guess:

$ grep TULIP /usr/src/linux/.config
# CONFIG_TULIP is not set

so in my kernel it is not compiled. You would like to see:

CONFIG_TULIP=m

so it is compiled as a module. If you don't see this you REALLY need to
make menuconfig and try to figure out where and how to set this, if you
catch what I mean ;^)

> What filesystems are required? I'm using (trying, anyway ;) 

REQUIRED? none actually, tho that can be quite annoying

real life? devfs, tmpfs, procfs are really needed I guess, depending on
your physical hard disk and whatever fs's you like there you might add
ext2, ext3, xfs, jfs, reiser, vfat etc etc etc. (be smart: go module on
the ones you *think* you don't need). smbfs is nice for small home
networks, nfs, well talk to elaine for that.


> reiserfs 
> on my root partitions, and on /home/shared; /boot is ext2. I've 
> deselected most of the filesystems I don't use; at boot time I seem 
> to be getting messages complaining about an inability to read a 
> UMSDOS partition; there are no DOS or Windows partitions on the 
> drive (and I'm certainly not booting from a Windows partition). It 
> also is complaining about missing the UFS filesystem.

cdroms? dvds? in your tray? 

> I'm not 
> trying to fix all this at once (or I'd quit being lazy and go get 
> some logs from the Lunar partition), but as I said earlier, I don't 
> know what's interacting with what. Am I removing an fs that makes 
> the kernel compile 'aggressively'? And, BTW, WTH is an 'aggressive' 
> kernel, anyway? Is it gonna make a pass at my Mandrake install? ;)

we hope so!

> It can *have* any of my Windows CDs, to do with as it pleases...I'm 
> quite excited about this distro, if I can just get it running.

they make excellent coasters. Make sure you agreed to the EULA tho.

sofar


-- 
Auke Kok <auke.kok at planet.nl>