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

Hi,

DriverLoader 2.34 is not compatible with 2.6.18 kernels. Patches to 
solve this issue can be installed with the 'dldrconfig --patch' command 
in a root shell. A new version of DriverLoader will be released soon 
with official 2.6.18 kernel support, at that time, we will also release 
pre-compiled packages for Fedora Core 6 and the latest kernel update of 
Fedora Core 5.

We have seen the problem you have reported with the /etc/modprobe.conf 
file in the dump provided by a few users. This problem seems to be 
specific to Fedora Core and unfortunately, we were not able to reproduce 
this problem on our systems. We need to be able to reproduce it in order 
to understand the root of the problem and provide a fix for it. If you 
want to take a look at this problem, you should check the 
/usr/sbin/dldrconfig shell script, it is responsible to add and remove 
entries in the modprobe configuration file(s). It is also possible that 
this is another program which is the cause of the problem.

Regards,


Jonathan
Technical specialist / Linuxant
www.linuxant.com
[email protected]



Henrik Nilsson wrote:
> 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
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> (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
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
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