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Re: Hardware-specific drivers/kernels archive (WAS: Re: FWD: RMS and Debian on his Toshiba)



On Fri, Jan 08, 1999 at 01:55:35PM -0500, Anderson MacKay wrote:
> Enrique Zanardi wrote:
> > That's why the old bootdisks had two different "flavors", "normal"
> > rescue and drivers disks and "tecra" ones. The "tecra" ones used a
> > different kernel, zImage, with a few other patches.
> 
> Maybe so ... but the tecra boot disks in hamm must have been different,
> because they seemed to be bzImage like the "normal" boot disks.  IIRC. 
> Or, maybe they were zImage ... but either way, they wouldn't boot. 
> (Hang right after printing "Uncompressing Linux ...")  Recompiling
> 2.0.35 on a machine I had nearby (luckily!) and putting that (zImage)
> kernel on a boot disk made everything work.

You mean just copying that kernel to a "standard" rescue disk? Or just
making a boot floppy with that kernel and no syslinux bootloader?
I ask because I suspect you were bitten by a syslinux bug, not a kernel
one. (And the pcmcia modules on the drivers disk won't work with a custom
kernel, you have to rebuild those too).

> Maybe nothing.  It just rang a big bell in the back of my head when he
> mentioned problems booting a Thinkpad 600 -- I use a custom kernel here,
> and so I haven't had occasion to even try the Debian boot floppies on a
> Thinkpad since about August or so.  If you'd like, I'll test them out --
> but only to the point of booting.  (Don't have the space to try a
> complete install ... :)

Any help/test-report is welcome!
 
> All the same, should we put together a drivers/kernels archive for
> specific hardware?  I mean, in supplying a distribution, doesn't it make
> sense to provide at least .debs of custom-made kernels.  That way, Joe
> User with a Thinkpad (for instance) doesn't have to track down the
> linux-laptop mailing lists and support pages, plus figure out how to
> compile kernels, just to get proper APM, sound, and pointer support ...
> just a thought.  An off-the-top-of-my-head estimate is that with a few
> more precompiled kernels, we could really make life easier for a lot of
> the laptop folks out there.  (Wasn't there a laptop-friendliness
> discussion here recently?  Deja vu.)

I guess we can put a few custom compiled kernels under
disks-i386/current/special-kernels . Two questions: which configs? and,
who will mantain them?
 
--
Enrique Zanardi					   ezanardi@ull.es


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