RE: [Madwifi-users] vmlinux: No such file or directory

[Alvin O. <alvin@Mail.Linux-Consulting.com>]

hi ya per

On Fri, 6 Aug 2004, Per Bjornsson wrote:

> Indeed, but the rules changed dramatically with the Fedora Core 2 and
> the 2.6 kernels (indeed, it seems that with the 2.6 kernels most
> distributions changed the packaging scheme because of the improvements
> in the kernel build system).

personally, i think that a /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build link is better
than all that junk sitting in /lib .. making / grow 10x or 100x
( its a bad thing if one likes / to be as small as possible so that
( you can quickly boot into single user mode and fix the rest of the 
( broken system later
 
> Yes, there is a _huge_ difference. I'm mainly familiar with Fedora,
> other distros might have done things somewhat differently but I am under
> the distinct impression that most distros changed the packaging between
> kernels 2.4 and 2.6.

2.6 creates lots of tweeks to be able to run it on older 2.4 based boxes
	- its 100x easier to just start with a ddrom that supports
	2.6 kernels than to rpm or compile each package one at a time
 	to convert from 2.4 to 2.6

> For 2.4 kernels there was no good way to separate out the stuff needed
> for an external module build, so things were organized such that the
> `/lib/modules/`uname -r`/build' directory, which has been the place to
> look for kernel configuration files etc for a few years now, was
> typically symlinked to the kernel sources. If everything was done right
> those kernel sources were prepared in such a way that you could build
> modules against them.
> 
> For the 2.6 kernels, the kernel build system includes a way of shoving
> the customized (for that kernel build) configuration files and makefiles
> into a special directory, which is all that is needed to build external
> modules. At least the Fedora kernel developers have chosen to put that
> output in `/lib/modules/`uname -r`/build', so that is now a real
> directory, not a symlink to the sources. That way there is never any
> risk of the sources you're building against being out of sync with the
> kernel you're running - a _huge_ improvement!

i haven't see it to help any  ....  it does in fact create more problems
when "build" is missing when other apps expects it to be a symlink
vs a hard directory ...

either way is fine, as long as one knows to go look for it which
is where the problem starts .. ( what all needs to be checked as to why 
it doesn't work on "my box" .. sometimes fun .. sometimes annoying )

> Now, from the version numbers it kind of sounded like Mahbub was running
> a custom kernel package which might have been built differently, so I

i think he's running an smp kernel on a single cpu box ...
and possibly running 2.6 kernels on with 2.4 rpm or vice versa
	- thus my uname question and smp question as to what he has

> Than installing an RPM?

to me ... that is the equivalent of go to macdonalds for burgers
( sometimes it works .. sometimes not .. but dont expect it to
( solve all of the problems .. as tehre are many silly assumptions
( that using rpm requires
	and than you stick the admin in front of a debian box or
	an sgi box or solaris box ... and rpm's is a foreign language

	- learning to compile will work across all systems

c ya
alvin