Randall R Schulz wrote:
[...]
It did not seem to lead me totally astray. I went with the suggestion of creating an RPM (because I was using one computer to do the build but the result was intended primarily for my friend's computer). This is where things fell down, probably because I don't know enough about how kernel RPMs work, what happens when they're installed. How the source RPM is fabricated (in particular, why I can have more than one kernel but apparently only one set of kernel sources installed at any one time).
A "make rpm" creates (AFAIK) only a very basic RPM package. If you really need to build a proper RPM package for your SuSE system, then I recommend using the SuSE Kernel Source src.rpm and making changes therein.
If you know of better resources for newbie kernel builders, I'd love to hear about them.
I wrote a kernel howto (actually this project started in 2002) which I think is well known among German-speaking Linux users - I get quite a lot of positive feedback. However, since it's written in German it might not be particularly helpful for you...
[...some suggestions...]
I think it's too minimal for practical purposes, especially if you want to transport the new kernel to another system.
True. I thought you only wanted to change your local machine.
[...] When I ran menuconfig I gave the configuration a variant name, but somehow I still didn't get a new build directory.
I think this is something different. A build directory is where you build the actual object files, modules, etc. and the final kernel image. In principle, /usr/src/linux-obj (or a subdirectory, respectively) is such a build directory - when using a build directory, you separate all the files created during a build from the source tree (the kernel source tree is always a clean tree). If I understood you correctly, then you wanted to give your new kernel a unique kernel release (which in general is a good idea when compiling your own kernel). This would translate into a new /lib/modules/ subdirectory. Did you mean such a directory? Or really a build directory?
From the info I've seen so far, it's difficult to say what might be wrong with your approach and why the vmware script fails on the other machine. I think, there are several approaches to tackle the problem: a) build your own complete kernel with USB_DEVICEFS enabled (via "make rpm" etc.) b) build your own complete kernel via src.rpm (default config adjusted) c) only build a new usbcore.ko module for the standard SuSE kernel, copy it or package it as RPM, and install it on the other machine(s) d) ...
From my point of view, c) might be the quickest and easiest solution as it does not require to install a complete new kernel, kernel sources, etc. on the other machine (remember, if you install a completely new kernel, you or the RPM package also need to take care of the initrd, bootloader configuration, etc.). You would only replace a single kernel module in the SuSE standard installation. However, it seems as if you've already managed to install and boot a new kernel and it's now only the vmware part that's going wrong. Correct?
Cheers, Th. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org