Building driver loader from sources fails for FC5 kernel 2.6.18 + exponentially growing modprobe.conf

Dear Linuxant support,

Two problems:

----------

I'm running Fedora Core 5 and I have been relying on building
driverloader automatically from source whenever I do a kernel upgrade.
This worked great until now, in particular for 2.6.17 series kernels.
I'm using the gereic source package "driverloader-2.34-1.i386.rpm".

However, I just upgraded to kernel-2.6.18-1.2200.fc5.i386, and now
the build fails. The first complaint is something about source
tree version not agreeing with running kernel version (but they
do look the same to me in the error messages). This is supposed
to be due to an incorrect kernel patch, and one is asked to
check whether the source tree path points to the correct place.

However, this seems to be just a warning. But then the build
fails anyway. I'm enclosing dldrconfig-buildlog.txt.

I also note that there is not yet any prebuilt driver loader for
2.6.18. So is there some major problem?

----------

The second issue is a long-standing problem with driverloader,
using Fedora's GUI tool for configuring the network interfaces,
and the file "/etc/modprobe.conf". (I've actually reported
it before, a long time ago.)

Whenever the network configuration is saved from within the
GUI tool, driverloader adds a comment to "/etc/modprobe.conf"
saying that some modules have been disabled.

Unfortunately it does not do this only the first time, but keeps
doing it whenever the network configuration is saved.

Even worse, each time thatcomment roughly DOUBLES in size!

So, after a while, one will notice that saving network configurations
takes a LONG time. And if one then happens to save once or twice
more, one can be in deep trouble. The "/etc/modprobe.conf" file
did grow to a 100 MBytes or so at one point, and it was quite
painful to dig out and rescue to small correct fragments of it.

I'm enclosing three versions of "/etc/modprobe.conf".
v1 is the correct one. v2 is after two further saves. And
v3 is after yet one more save. Note how the size of the
comment doubles for each save.

Weird! And a potentially nasty trap for the unwary.

This problem has persisted across quite a few Fedora Core versions.

Best,

/Henrik

-- 
Henrik Nilsson
School of Computer Science and Information Technology
The University of Nottingham
[email protected]

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(cd /usr/src/kernels/2.6.18-1.2200.fc5-i686-dldrtmp1776 && make "DLDR_KERNELSRC=/usr/src/kernels/2.6.18-1.2200.fc5-i686-dldrtmp1776" "M=/usr/lib/driverloader/modules" "CC=gcc" clean)
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/kernels/2.6.18-1.2200.fc5-i686-dldrtmp1776'
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/kernels/2.6.18-1.2200.fc5-i686-dldrtmp1776'
rm -rf *.o GPL/*.o *.ko GPL/*.ko *.mod.c GPL/*.mod.c .*.cmd GPL/.*.cmd .tmp_versions .tmp_versions  /usr/src/kernels/2.6.18-1.2200.fc5-i686-dldrtmp1776/.tmp_versions/driverloader.mod
Unable to determine version of kernel source directory /usr/src/kernels/2.6.18-1.2200.fc5-i686-dldrtmp1776
make: *** [check_kernelver] Error 1

alias eth0 tg3
alias snd-card-0 snd-intel8x0
options snd-card-0 index=0  
options snd-intel8x0 index=0  
remove snd-intel8x0 { /usr/sbin/alsactl store 0 >/dev/null 2>&1 || : ; }; /sbin/modprobe -r --ignore-remove snd-intel8x0
alias eth1 driverloader
install bcm43xx /bin/true # temporarily disabled by driverloader - conflicts with bcm43xx.inf

alias eth0 tg3
alias snd-card-0 snd-intel8x0
options snd-card-0 index=0  
options snd-intel8x0 index=0  
remove snd-intel8x0 { /usr/sbin/alsactl store 0 >/dev/null 2>&1 || : ; }; /sbin/modprobe -r --ignore-remove snd-intel8x0
alias eth1 driverloader
install bcm43xx /bin/true # temporarily disabled by driverloader - conflicts with bcm43xx.inf # temporarily disabled by driverloader - conflicts with bcm43xx.inf # temporarily disabled by driverloader - conflicts with bcm43xx.inf # temporarily disabled by driverloader - conflicts with bcm43xx.inf

alias eth0 tg3
alias snd-card-0 snd-intel8x0
options snd-card-0 index=0  
options snd-intel8x0 index=0  
remove snd-intel8x0 { /usr/sbin/alsactl store 0 >/dev/null 2>&1 || : ; }; /sbin/modprobe -r --ignore-remove snd-intel8x0
alias eth1 driverloader
install bcm43xx /bin/true # temporarily disabled by driverloader - conflicts with bcm43xx.inf # temporarily disabled by driverloader - conflicts with bcm43xx.inf # temporarily disabled by driverloader - conflicts with bcm43xx.inf # temporarily disabled by driverloader - conflicts with bcm43xx.inf # temporarily disabled by driverloader - conflicts with bcm43xx.inf # temporarily disabled by driverloader - conflicts with bcm43xx.inf # temporarily disabled by driverloader - conflicts with bcm43xx.inf # temporarily disabled by driverloader - conflicts with bcm43xx.inf