Baslinux mailing list

[Christof Lange <cce.zizkov AT volny.cz>]

Hi Sindi, 

I studied blfiles.htm on your website and downloaded: 

a) David's 2.4.31 kernel with the module/pppd packet 
   (from _your_ site) 

b) your "2.4.31 KERNEL for LAPTOPS with USB-STORAGE and PCMCIA 
   support" bzimagela.431 with modules-la-nonpcmcia-431.tgz 

and was happy to realize that both kernels worked well in my 
existing BL2 installation. 

If I am allowed to make a little suggestion: As the file names in
your download directory are quite similar to each other it would
be a gread improvement in user-friendlyness to insert HTML links
into blfiles.htm (as you doubtlessly intended in the beginning). 

But here are my experiences: 

a) David's kernel: 

After booting into my BL2 file system, copying the entire usbspec.tgz
into /lib I started to load usb-relevant modules with insmod. This 
did not work, because insmod did not find the path to the modules. 
Then I went to the subdirectories and loaded those modules I could 
find. In two cases I got an error message with some 10 dependencies, 
i.e. unresolved symbols. But I could not find any other modules with 
these names. So I could not get the USB memory drives working and 
gave up. 

b) Your Laptop kernel bzimagela.431: 

Works for me. I placed the new modules in the directory (after 
deleting David's modules - as you had warned me not to mix them up). 
I could load all USB-like modules successfully, and plugging/mounting
of USB sticks worked perfectly. Other than in David's floppy-version,
the error message when I unplugged a mounted device was rather short: 
only one line. So my complain from the last mail has been solved too. 
The only thing I noticed, was that those devices that had already been 
unplugged, still seemed to be mounted, if they had not been ordinarily 
unmounted before unplugging. I wonder whether this could be automized 
by some kind of small script demon. 

Then I read the following passage in your blfiles.htm: 

------------------------------

bzimagjd.431 configjd.431 ide-cd.o.jd.431 (remove the .jd.431) Same
as 'la' but with built-in support for IDE FLOPPY (internal zip drive)
and module support for IDE CD (non-SCSI CD burner), named for Jim D.
For use on Jim's desktop without scsi, sound, or framebuffer (which
will eventually be added back for vesafb and aty only).

See zgv-5.9-uclibc.tgz for a zgv which works with kernel 2.4.31 in
libc5. Kernel 2.4.31 needs libvga.so.1.4.3, not available for libc5.
Use this kernel only if you don't already have a libvga.so.1 because
it will overwrite it and disable existing programs. Suggested use is
in BL3 for a small non-X viewer that views more formats than xli.

--------------------------------

In the beginning I thought that the libvga problem relates only to 
bzimagjd.431, but then I rather checked zgv and got an error message. 

Do I understand correctly that neither of your kernels will tolerate 
the existence of libvga.so in the file system? That means that any 
program requireing libvga ceases to work? Is that all? Or does 
the kernel "censor" even other files in the file system? 

As I read the sentence "use this kernel only..." a bit to late, what 
will I have to do now, in order to fix my installation? Probably not 
delete libvga, but only replace the graphic programs by different ones 
that do not need libvga, right? 

I will probably test your other 2.4.31 kernels soon, as my ultimate 
goal is to integrate even the CD burner. But first I will see if I am 
able to create a RAM-disk version of BL2 working with the laptop 
kernel. 

Thanks a lot for all the good work, 

Christof

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