[ILUG] Mandrake - it works....but why?

[Bryan O'Donoghue]

Kevin Philp wrote:
> On Wednesday 9 February 2005 12:01, Bryan O'Donoghue wrote:
> 
>>Kevin Philp wrote:
>>
>>>What are peoples recommendations - should we just stick with the 2.4
>>>kernel?
>>>
>>>Kevin.
>>
>>Nope.
>>
>>It _sounds_ to me like there is some sort of error that gets exposed by
>>harddrake when probing for whatever USB hardware you use ....
>>
>>
>>Having a little think about this in my head, I'd _say_ what may be
>>happening is that during system install the installer tries to probe for
>>_every_ possible device driver it has in /lib/modules/2.6.blah
>>
>>one of those does something nasty to your machine.
>>
>>Configuring the system with 2.4 probably has less modules or perhaps
>>just not that hard hang error with module-x.
>>
>>Since you get all the way through configuration, with a 2.4, you now
>>have a configured set of modules to load at startup.
>>
>>This is why (I'd guess) that subsequent 2.6 boots succeed once you are
>>probing for _just_ the hardware on your system as opposed to _all_
>>potential hardware.
>>
>>disclaimer : I have a vague idea that *mainlinedistro* automagic config
>>utils try to load the world and it's mother of modules during install,
>>that guess could be wrong, this is not a process I've investigated in
>>any detail worth talking about.
>>
>>You should find the module/modules that are causing the error and file a
>>bug report.
>>
>>
>>Bryan
> 
> 
> Interesting, here is the modules.conf from a "fixed" machine and from another 
> "bust" machine. I will try modifying modules.conf in line with what works on 
> the bust machine and see if that also springs back to life. This is a it 
> beyond me, is there anything obviously wrong here? 
> 
> FIXED
> probeall usb-interface usb-uhci ehci-hcd
> above snd-via82xx snd-pcm-oss
> alias sound-slot-0 snd-via82xx
> probeall scsi_hostadapter imm ppa
> alias eth0 8139too
> 
> 
> BUST
> # This file is autogenerated from /etc/modules.conf using 
> generate-modprobe.conf command
> 
> remove snd-via82xx /sbin/modprobe -r snd-pcm-oss; /sbin/modprobe --first-time 
> -r --ignore-remove snd-via82xx
> install snd-via82xx /sbin/modprobe --first-time --ignore-install snd-via82xx 
> && { /sbin/modprobe snd-pcm-oss; /bin/true; }
> alias eth0 8139too
> alias sound-slot-0 snd-via82xx
> install usb-interface /sbin/modprobe uhci-hcd; /sbin/modprobe ehci-hcd; 
> /bin/true

Disclaimer: [1]

but, if you have a USB 2.0 host controller, then the usb-uhci module is 
redundant and might be causing this error for you. Granted having both 
loaded on my system running 2.6.9-rc2-mm1 causes no errors, but, that 
doesn't prove anything, in and of itself.

If you _can_ cause an error, by changing

probeall usb-interface usb-uhci ehci-hcd

to

install usb-interface /sbin/modprobe uhci-hcd; /sbin/modprobe ehci-hcd; 
/bin/true [2]

Then get as much information as you can together about it, the 
conditions to reproduce, your hardware and mail Mandrake and possibly 
the linux-usb-devel mailing list.


Bryan

[1] I use Slackware & am not competent to talk about the semantics of 
what's currently the fashionable way to munge together a modules.conf

[2] Not sure about that syntax in the context of these files [1]