Re: Upgrade & Kernel Problems

[Philip Hands <phil@hands.com>]

> No, there are no "tecra drivers"....   Whatever kernel-package is doing,
> it's making kernel's that are not compatible with tecra (and other)
> notebooks....
> 
> Like I said, I did what works for me - and that's making kernels "by hand".
> I've never seen any mention of *why* the base kernels don't work, only that
> they don't.  So, until I know the why, I'll stick with what works.

Tecras and other notebooks, and some PCs have a problem where they fail to 
flush the cache when switching on the a20 gate (IIRC), which is provoked by 
bzipped kernels, but not by zimage kernels.

So when the bzip loader does its magic to unzip the kernel, the cache 
ends up full of drivel, which it then proceeds to try and run.

There are two solutions that I know of:

  1) apply a patch, which flushes the cache.  Unfortunately this causes other 
     machines to crash so is not universally applicable (hence the tecra disks 
     being segragated from the mainstream)

  2) build a zimage, rather than bzimage kernel.  This seems to get round the
     problem, and is almost certainly why your hand built kernels work.

     Of course you could always use the --zimage option to make-kpkg, or even
     set this as the default in /etc/kernel-pkg.conf, but if doing things the
     hard way makes you happy, go ahead ;-)

Cheers, Phil.