I recently upgraded my system from Slackware 8.1 to 9.1 (which includes an upgrade of eye candy to GNOME 2 and KDE 3.1 :). With the upgrade, I switched from GCC 2.95.3 to 3.2.3, as well as a clean kernel recompile.
However, since I am using a closed-source, binary-only module for my WinModem (which is no longer supported by the company [1]), there was no way for me to just plug in the module into my spiffy new GCC 3-compiled version 2.4.22 kernel. Two solutions exist: downgrade to GCC 2 and recompile the kernel, or try your luck with the "relabeled" binary [2]. Unfortunately, the "relabeled" binary doesn't work [3], and so I have downgraded to GCC 2 for the meantime. Does anyone have links to the kernel developer's discussion on the interaction between GCC versions and the kernel? I'm looking for really technical stuff, as I want to understand what exactly is going on. Most of my Googling has turned up links to developers basically saying "no, you can't insert modules compiled with a different version of GCC than the kernel" and "try your luck." I haven't found technical documentation or at least a general explanation on the interaction yet. Any help, links, and info is appreciated. :) (NOTE: I'm also thinking of firing off an email to Motorola to get them to at least consider releasing the source. Dream on...) [1] I have a Motorola SM56. The Linux kernel module nor the chipset itself is no longer supported by the company. See http://www.sm56.tk for the kludged binary, and http://www.motorola.com for info about support. [2] Relabeling means manually fiddling around with the object file labels that mark the binary as being compiled with GCC 2. This involves objcopy(1) and objdump(1) and a lot of patience. [3] Yeah, I know, you could just 'insmod -f sm56.o' it, but that still won't work. Kernel panics when the device is used. I have a sneaky suspicion though that I could tweak the kludge so that it could be force loaded. JM Ibanez [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.livejournal.com/~cyberlizard/ --- If Bill Gates is the Devil then Linus Torvalds must be the Messiah. -- Unknown source --- -- Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List [EMAIL PROTECTED] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) Official Website: http://plug.linux.org.ph Searchable Archives: http://marc.free.net.ph . To leave, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/plug . Are you a Linux newbie? To join the newbie list, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/ph-linux-newbie
