Gentoo and Kernel 2.5

Vlad · Posted: Sat Jul 27, 2002 12:31 am Post subject: Gentoo and Kernel 2.5

Has anyone managed to get kernel 2.5.28 working? I've managed to compile it, but can't boot (freezes after "Starting local..."). Now I've read through the following posts:

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=937
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=9357
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=3970

But have been unable to find a working solution. Everyone seems to be of the opinion that the problem exists in the relationship between devfs and the console. Does anyone have a definitive explanation for wtf is going on? I am at a total loss.

Thanks, Vlad.

mellofone · Apprentice Joined: 13 Apr 2002 Posts: 287

neuron · Advocate Joined: 28 May 2002 Posts: 2371

it's becouse of agetty.

devfs in 2.5.x for some reason on gentoo does not generate /dev/vc/* (which is /dev/tty*..).

You can use it in single user mode

single user -> root -> su <user>

mellofone · Apprentice Joined: 13 Apr 2002 Posts: 287

neuron · Advocate Joined: 28 May 2002 Posts: 2371

not sure.

if you get problems like this btw, start in single user mode and check logs

, that pretty much gives all the info you'll need. (not to solve it though unfortunatly, no idea why it doesen't generate the /dev/vc/*)

Vlad · Posted: Sun Jul 28, 2002 8:33 pm Post subject:

Hah!

I succeeded in getting Kernel 2.5.28 to work. And what's more, I managed to get the Nvidia Kernel Module (2960) working as well!

Devfs seems to be borked in some fashion in 2.5.28 - I installed both the gentoo-sources kernel as well as 2.5.28 - and there were a number of "mistakes" in /dev. It seems, despite the fact that certain devices were compiled into the kernel, that /dev entries for those devices were not made. I worked around this by manually (well, copying portions of /dev to /tmp under 2.4, then copying them from /tmp to /dev when booting 2.5) installing the dev entires for kernel 2.5. The result was a successful boot :)

I'm currently running devfsd-1.3.9 (which still doesn't work right). I also updated a number of other packages. Here is the output from the ver_linux script:

If some fields are empty or look unusual you may have an old version.
Compare to the current minimal requirements in Documentation/Changes.

Linux betaserver.com 2.5.28 #7 Sun Jul 28 12:12:17 PDT 2002 i686 AuthenticAMD

Gnu C gcc (GCC) 3.1
Gnu make 3.79.1
util-linux 2.11t
mount 2.11t
modutils 2.4.18
e2fsprogs 1.27
Linux C Library 2.2.5
Dynamic linker (ldd) 2.2.5
Linux C++ Library 4.0.0
Procps 2.0.7
Net-tools 1.60
Kbd 1.06
Sh-utils 2.0.11
Modules Loaded NVdriver snd-rtctimer rtc mousedev uhci-hcd hid input tulip crc32

Btw, I seem to get some errors when trying to compile the new 2.5.29 kernel. Gonna try it again this afternoon though...

Vlad

ghost_o · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 10 Jul 2002 Posts: 119

Would adding the entries to devsfd.conf allow it to work properly?

-G

Vlad · Posted: Mon Jul 29, 2002 3:15 am Post subject:

I'd imagine so - but I have yet to actually look into how devfsd.conf works =P