Re: What exactly does "supports Linux" mean?

Richard B. Johnson
2003-05-13T14:11:49Z

On Tue, 13 May 2003, Alan Cox wrote:

> On Maw, 2003-05-13 at 14:16, Stephan von Krawczynski wrote:
> > I bought a card from some vendor, claiming "support for Linux". I tried
> to make
> > it work in a configuration with a standard 2.4.20 kernel from kernel.org.
> The
> > drivers (kernel modules) are binary-only. They did not load because of a
> > version mismatch. Asking for versions loadable with standard kernels,
> I got the
> > response that they only support kernels from Red Hat and SuSE, but
> no standard
> > kernels.
>

If you really want it to work, try `insmod -f modulename.o`. See of it
works. RedHat supplies kernels with "intermediate" version numbers
like linux-2.4.18-24. A perfectly-good module from linux-2.4.18
may fail to load without the '-f' option, even though it is probably
compatible. Try it, it may work fine. You can modify /etc/rc.d/rc.local
to insert the module during startup so you don't have to muck with
/etc/modules.conf (and having other startup-code change it when it
"finds" new hardware.

Cheers,
Dick Johnson
Penguin : Linux version 2.4.20 on an i686 machine (797.90 BogoMips).
Why is the government concerned about the lunatic fringe? Think about it.