[Techtalk] compiling an external kernel module

Mary mary-linuxchix at puzzling.org
Thu Apr 8 09:21:53 EST 2004


On Wed, Apr 07, 2004 at 02:37:39PM -0700, Carla Schroder wrote:
> So what it really comes down is depending on the module author to
> provide a workable makefile, then the rest is routine build & install.
> If it's so far out it doesn't even have that, I suppose Plan B is "too
> bad, so sad!"

Pretty much. I wouldn't touch it under those circumstances at least.

There are a couple of alternative ways new hardware support might be
available: in one of the non-official trees, or as kernel patches.

As far as non-official trees go, I don't know whether Mr Telsa still
maintains the -ac branch but it used to be a good source of newer
hardware support. Several other kernel hackers have their own branches
but you'd have to hunt around for their changelogs or look for
linux-kernel emails with features. Once you find them, it's normally the 
usual patching exercise: grab the last official release, (sometimes) 
patch it to the newest pre release, and then apply the third party patch 
to the tree and compile new kernel.

The last alternative is that may be provided as a smaller patch against
kernel sources (usually some obscure version too like
2.4.26-rc2-xyz-pre7 which requires you to patch the kernel several times
just to get to the right version). Again, patch and build.

I have done this once or twice (chasing nforce IDE support, for example,
which made it into the -ac kernels before the official ones). But it's
getting near "too bad so sad" stage. Modules are easier :)

-Mary


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