Re: Some experiences upgrading my kernel from 2.4.28 to 2.6.11.8

Andrew Gaylard wrote:	[Fri May 27 2005, 03:49:09PM EDT]
> I've just spent some time upgrading the kernel on my Miata box
> from 2.4.28 to 2.6.11.8.  I thought I'd share my thoughts and
> perhaps encourage others who're keen to try this.

A note for anybody interested in jumping on this: 2.6.11.8 does not
build out of the box on SMP machines.  2.6.12_rc4 does however, so
you can either try that or wait for 2.6.12 to be available and marked
stable.

> 1.  Getting up to date
> I did the "emerge -ua world" to bring my whole system up to date.
> sendmail-8.13.3 and strace-4.5.11 wouldn't build.  Anyone seen this?

Please file bugs for these... http://bugs.gentoo.org/

> 2.  Getting the source.
> Using "emerge gentoo-sources" failed with the error
> "All ebuilds that could satisfy "gentoo-sources" have been masked"
> I used "emerge vanilla-sources", and got the source unpacked in
> /usr/src/linux-2.6.11.8.
> 
> Should there be a gentoo-sources for alphas?

Yes, we should, but we've been concentrating on vanilla-sources for
now.

> 4.  Booting.
> I had some problems booting.  First, I configured my kernel for
> my system type (miata).  This kernel hung while booting (I think in the
> keyboard initialization code).  I had the same problem with 2.4.x
> kernels on this box; the solution then was to rebuild with the
> system-type set to "generic".  This worked.

Interesting!  For me "generic" doesn't work, but "dp264" does (on
a ds20e).  I guess this is sort of like the tulip driver: if it
doesn't work, try the other one.

> The third problem I had was relatively minor.  My eth0 and eth1
> were switched around, and all network services (and the firewall setup)
> were seriously confused.  This just required editing the appropriate
> files in /etc.  Perhaps a word in one of the docs might help
> others who get stuck at this point?

A lot of devices (network, disks, even serial ports) can be renumbered
in the switch from 2.4 to 2.6.  You're right, it would be nice if this
were noted in the docs.

Regards,
Aron

--
Aron Griffis
Gentoo Linux Developer

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