compiled kernel - modules mess (was:kernel doesn't compile?)

[Andre Costa]

On Thu, 22 Jan 2004 12:45:11 +0100
Emiliano Brunetti <emiliano_brunetti at idg.it> wrote:

> However, two strange things happened:
> 
> - at first boot my new kernel got panic - it wouldn't recnogize boot
> option root=LABEL=/ in grub.conf. A simple change into root=/dev/myhd
> solved. Any hints on how to restore it to root=LABEL=/?

I've seen this already. In my case, I had turned off 'RAM disk support'
on my custom kernel, and (surprise) this was preventing the use of
labels on /etc/fstab (boy, I really took some time to find this out). I
guess this is due to the fact that the kernel has to setup an initial
filesystem (even if it is 'virtual', like a RAM disk) so that it can
load some modules to perform other tasks.

> - there's a little mess with modules, possibly due to a bad
> configuration of mine. However, that mess got inherited by binary
> kernel 2140.nptl, installed with a simple 'yum update' some weeks ago.
> Now that kernel at boot time looks for modules that were not even
> compiled before i tried to make a custom kernel with 2149.nptl
> sources.

Does this happen with your custom kernel or with the downloaded kernel?
Anyway, first place to look at is /etc/modules.conf, maybe you have some
old stuff there. Other than that, a clean custom compilation should not
raise such problems IIRC.

> This is the first time i compile a Fedora kernel, but not the first
> time i compile a kernel. Last time, some months ago, i didn't run into
> such problems. I remember that modules for different kernel versions
> were in different places and wouldn't overlap.

And they still are. Whenever you compile a RH kernel, a /lib/[kernel
version].nptlcustom dir is created, and your files are stored there. Mine is:

~ ls /lib/modules/
2.4.22-1.2135.nptlcustom/  2.4.22-1.2140.nptlcustom/  2.4.22-1.2149.nptlcustom/
2.4.22-1.2140.nptl/        2.4.22-1.2149.nptl/

These dirs are named after 'uname -r' for each kernel.

I've always compiled my own kernels from kernel.org, and I had some
problems when I started compiling kernels provided by RH, too. But, once
I got past the 'make mrproper' and the RAM disks issues, all is nice
again.

HTH

Andre

-- 
Andre Oliveira da Costa