Bleak PCMCIA news...
Mar. 10th, 2002 08:23 amIn Linux, it turns out that kernel modules contain version information that is checked against the current kernel when a module is loaded. Quoting from the pcmcia HOWTO:
I guess I'll just copy my files onto floppy and reinstall. On the one hand, it was a bitch getting X to work on the thing; on the other, if I have the wireless card installed in the other slot, maybe it will be automagically configured when I reinstall...
In other Linux news, I am going to track down a copy of SmallLinux and try to install it on my IBM ThinkPad... maybe.
And oh, yes! There are those translations! (I finished the tables last night in time for me and Galina to watch Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland in Klute, which I thought was a surprisingly good movie, if you can overlook the attempt to be too hip, and the fact that Fonda stars in it, both of which I decided to do last night.)
Cheers...
The intent was for this to make modules less version-dependent, because the checksums would only change if a kernel interface changed, and would generally stay the same across minor kernel updates. In practice, the checksums have turned out to be even more restrictive, because many kernel interfaces depend on compile-time kernel option settings. Also, the checksums turned out to be an excessively pessimistic judge of compatibility.Since the version of the pcmcia software I removed is different from the version that's on my distribution CDs (which implies the compiled kernel is different from what is on my distribution), and since I could not find the version I removed on the net as a binary, and since even if I did, the HOWTO indicates that it wouldn't work anyway...
The practical upshot of this is that kernel modules are closely tied to both the kernel version, and the setting of many kernel configuration options. Generally, a set of modules compiled for one 2.0.31 kernel will not load against some other 2.0.31 kernel unless special care is taken to ensure that the two were built with similar configurations. This makes distribution of precompiled kernel modules a tricky business.
I guess I'll just copy my files onto floppy and reinstall. On the one hand, it was a bitch getting X to work on the thing; on the other, if I have the wireless card installed in the other slot, maybe it will be automagically configured when I reinstall...
In other Linux news, I am going to track down a copy of SmallLinux and try to install it on my IBM ThinkPad... maybe.
And oh, yes! There are those translations! (I finished the tables last night in time for me and Galina to watch Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland in Klute, which I thought was a surprisingly good movie, if you can overlook the attempt to be too hip, and the fact that Fonda stars in it, both of which I decided to do last night.)
Cheers...