via-rhine (or rhinefelt) and VT6105/VT6103 driver problems with Debian stable
I hope I can get some help on this list as I've dug myself in a hole
I think.
I run debian stable (3.0r2) for a small home set up on ADSL that
handles Email (closed opt in!) for some charities. I've used old
hardware for a firewall and a server but the firewall is dying and I
replaced it with a lovely, small, near silent box with a VIA EPIA
mini-ITX motherboard which has two LAN ports controlled by a VT6105
on board controller. If I stick a tried and tested realtek 8139
clone PCI card in I can have the three ports I want ....
Having always used old hardware and never hit compatibility problems
I didn't realise I was asking for trouble. The 2.4.18 kernel is the
latest in the Debian stable distro and I want to stick with Debian
'cos I know and trust it, and stable 'cos of the security updates,
particularly important as this is firewall. Trouble is that I think
the driver I need is a via-rhine one but the one that comes with that
Debian kernel won't install (the rtl one does fine!). I've tried
pulling the driver (rhinefet) off the VIA motherboard site and the
via-rhine off the scyld site but I'm hopelessly out of my depth now
as there are clearly old and vexatious issues about the ways that
different distros store the headers and source, e.g. both VIA and
scyld's Makefiles and source want a modversions.h file that clearly
doesn't exist in Debian .. I've tried to work round that but modprobe
on the via-rhine.o I finally produced gives all sorts of unresolved
symbol complaints and I know I'm out of my league here.
Can anyone help? The only alternative I can see looming is to spend
about a third as much as I paid for the entire machine on a totally
unnecessarily fast quadport Intel card (I need three ports and only
have one free PCI slot as the machine is so small).
Sod, sod, sod: I'll take hardware compatibility more seriously in
future won't I?!
TIA,
Chris
P.S. Copying to debian-user for archive record if nothing else,
though similar question has twice drawn blank there beforePSYCTC:
Psychotherapy, Psychology, Psychiatry, Counselling
and Therapeutic Communities; practice, research,
teaching and consultancy.
Chris Evans & Jo-anne Carlyle
http://psyctc.org/ Email: chris@psyctc.org
Reply to: