Building a new kernel to support your hardware (was RE: FC2 - No eth0)

Phil Schaffner P.R.Schaffner at IEEE.org
Thu May 27 01:56:51 UTC 2004


On Tue, 2004-05-25 at 11:48 -0500, -=Brian Truter=- wrote:
...
> Yes, you are right there, lspci wont help much, hehe. 
> 
> To be honest with you, I am not sure how you would get the ISA netcard
> running. Im sure someone here would be able to, though. I would assume it
> would be in a similar manner.
> 
> That would explain why it wasn't autodetected, however.
> 
> Grabbing a PCI card would definitely make your efforts easier. I recomment
> getting an Intel based card, everything supports them, and I have never had
> any troubles with them. Im sure there are many that fit that bill, that is
> just my personal experience.

Looks like Red Hat dropped support for this card.  At best you will have
to locate or build the ISA ne [possibly ne2000?] kernel module.  If I
read the kernel-source .config correctly it's not selected by default.

To build your own kernel, you need to install kernel-source (yum install
kernel-source) and compiler (yum install gcc) if not done already, and
then build a custom kernel (or module) and select "Device
Drivers/Networking support/Network device support/Ethernet (10 or
100Mbit)/Other ISA cards/NE2000/NE1000 support" in gconfig.  For a
beginner, I'd recommend an absolute minimum of changes.

Process goes something like this:
------------------- Kernel compile/install script ------------------
#!/bin/bash
# /root/bin/make_linux
# Kernel build steps:
#   1. Unpack the sources or install kernel-source<version>.i386.rpm
#      and cd to source directory (ex: "cd /usr/src/linux-2.6.5-1.358")
#   2. make mrproper
#   3. Recommended - copy the .config file from configs/ or from your
#      old linux kernel source tree to new kernel tree (may save time,
#      if you want to reuse the old settings).
#      (ex: "cp cp configs/kernel-2.6.5-i686.config .config")
#      then "make oldconfig"
#   4. make xconfig
#   5. make dep (not required for 2.6 kernels)
#   6. make
#   7. make bzImage
#   8. make modules
#   9. make modules_install
#  10. make install
#  11. configure LILO or GRUB.
#  12. Optional - make clean (If you want to free up disk space)
# This script implements steps  6-11 for FC2

(make && make bzImage && make modules && make modules_install && make install) >& /tmp/MakeKernel.log
------------------- Kernel compile/install script ------------------

Inspect /tmp/MakeKernel.log for errors - just look at the end.  If there
are no error messages then chances are you are OK.  Reboot and pick the
new kernel from the grub menu - it will have the same version as current
RPM kernel, but with "custom" appended.  If the new module is not loaded
may have to add a line to /etc/modprobe.conf like "alias eth0 ne2000" (I
think this will be the name), but should show up in a find command:

[root at tabb1 root]# cd /usr/src/linux-2.6.5-1.358
[root at tabb1 linux-2.6.5-1.358]# cd /lib/modules/`uname -r`
[root at tabb1 2.6.5-1.358custom]# find kernel/drivers/net -name "ne*"
kernel/drivers/net
kernel/drivers/net/ne2k-pci.ko            (hopefully right along here)
kernel/drivers/net/wireless/netwave_cs.ko
kernel/drivers/net/netconsole.ko

Leave off the ".ko" suffix in the alias entry.

Good Luck!
Phil






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