[ale] kernel config

[Michael B. Trausch]

On Sat, 2007-03-03 at 22:57 -0500, Paul Cartwright wrote:

> well, I read most of the linux kernel in a nutshell. I downloaded the
> new kernel, did some configuring... did the make... put it
> inthe /boot, and I wasn't going to play with it til my next reboot.
> Well my system froze tonight, so I decided to try to boot it. I got to
> the init 5, and ... no xwindows. Thought to myself it might be the
> NVIDIA driver, so I did the NVIDIA...run thingy, ran sax2 to config
> it, and. nada. pound prompt, no xwidnows. I figured I'd work on it
> tomorrow, so I rebooted into my know good, safe 10.2 kernel. NO
> XWIDNOWS, init 5 and a pound prompt. Here I am getting ready to go on
> a trip tomorrow, and CRASH!!!!


Toying with the system always carries with it the risk of breaking
something.  I know that building kernels to work on Ubuntu and friends
has been rather hard, though I was successful in doing so with Edgy (I
failed to do so in Dapper, however, as I recall).


> well, I fooled around with the install CD trying a repair, nada, same
> thing. Finally I tried just a startx, and I got a few errors about no
> XGL module in xorg.  Pounded out that line, ran init 5 again and
> VOILA ! xwindows!  remind me to BACK UP my system next time, before I
> try something like that!!!  I didn't think adding a new kernel source
> was supposed to screw with your existing install, but obviously, since
> I had beryl, and compiz, and an NVIDIA card, it is easy to screw
> things up.  lesson learned. At least I learned something about kernel
> installation today!  and backups.. ya never have a fresh enough
> backup...


That sounds like the problems that I had with Dapper, though in that
situation there was no NVIDIA driver or any 3D acceleration involved.
The problem that I ran into was on a machine with a POS SiS chipset.

That having been said, I did find that starting with the Ubuntu .config
and then tailoring it seems to work best.  Though, I think that their
kernel has things that aren't in the vanilla kernel sources and so some
things may not work as you expect them to right away.  The biggest
reason that I have to rebuild the kernel these days is to fix the USB
driver when I find another device that breaks the standard.  It makes me
wish they would just use a table that could be altered from userspace...

 -- Mike

--
Michael B. Trausch
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