net-pf-10, 2.6.1

net-pf-10, 2.6.1

[root]

Since compiling and installing 2.6.1, I, like many others, get these 
repeated error messages:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Jan 29 22:48:56 kernel: request_module: failed /sbin/modprobe -- net-pf-10. error = 256
Jan 29 22:53:01 kernel: request_module: failed /sbin/modprobe -- net-pf-10. error = 256
Jan 29 22:56:28 kernel: request_module: failed /sbin/modprobe -- net-pf-10. error = 256
Jan 29 23:08:01 kernel: request_module: failed /sbin/modprobe -- net-pf-10. error = 256
Jan 29 23:14:48 kernel: request_module: failed /sbin/modprobe -- net-pf-10. error = 256
Jan 29 23:23:01 kernel: request_module: failed /sbin/modprobe -- net-pf-10. error = 256
Jan 29 23:31:40 kernel: request_module: failed /sbin/modprobe -- net-pf-10. error = 256
----------------------------------------------------------------------

I do not have ipv6 support in my kernel-config:

# CONFIG_INET_IPCOMP is not set
# CONFIG_IPV6 is not set
# CONFIG_DECNET is not set

The version of module-init-tools is 3.0-pre5-1 from Debian testing.

Is there any guidance about this little annoyance yet? Most of the
advice I've seen (on other lists) suggests putting the following in
modprobe.conf:

   install net-pf-10 /bin/true

But this has made no difference for me.

There seems to be a correlation between the issue of the error-message
and regular exim runs:

Jan 29 22:53:01 ohlone /USR/SBIN/CRON[284]: (mail) CMD (  if [ -x /usr/lib/exim/exim3 -a -f /etc/exim/exim.conf ]; then /usr/lib
/exim/exim3 -q ; fi)
Jan 29 22:53:01 ohlone kernel: request_module: failed /sbin/modprobe -- net-pf-10. error = 256

Jan 30 00:23:01 ohlone /USR/SBIN/CRON[311]: (mail) CMD (  if [ -x /usr/lib/exim/exim3 -a -f /etc/exim/exim.conf ]; then /usr/lib/exim/exim3 -q ; fi)
Jan 30 00:23:01 ohlone kernel: request_module: failed /sbin/modprobe -- net-pf-10. error = 256

Almost all of the error messages from modprobe come exactly on the
heels of a call from cron to run exim. But why should exim spawn an 
attempt to load this module? And why just with kernel 2.6.1?

Thanks for any advice,

Jim

Re: net-pf-10, 2.6.1

[Russell King]

On Fri, Jan 30, 2004 at 12:36:28AM -0800, root wrote:
> Is there any guidance about this little annoyance yet? Most of the
> advice I've seen (on other lists) suggests putting the following in
> modprobe.conf:
> 
>    install net-pf-10 /bin/true

You want:

	alias net-pf-10 off

> Almost all of the error messages from modprobe come exactly on the
> heels of a call from cron to run exim. But why should exim spawn an 
> attempt to load this module? And why just with kernel 2.6.1?

Because its trying to see if the kernel supports IPv6 by creating an
IPv6 socket.  Since the IPv6 module is not available, it correctly
fails and uses IPv4 instead.

-- 
Russell King
 Linux kernel    2.6 ARM Linux   - http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/
 maintainer of:  2.6 PCMCIA      - http://pcmcia.arm.linux.org.uk/
                 2.6 Serial core

Re: net-pf-10, 2.6.1

[Greg Norris]

On Fri, Jan 30, 2004 at 12:36:28AM -0800, root wrote:
> Is there any guidance about this little annoyance yet? Most of the
> advice I've seen (on other lists) suggests putting the following in
> modprobe.conf:
> 
>    install net-pf-10 /bin/true
> 
> But this has made no difference for me.

Did you run "update-modules" afterward?

Re: net-pf-10, 2.6.1

[Jim McCloskey]

* Russell King (rmk+lkml@arm.linux.org.uk) wrote:  

  |>  On Fri, Jan 30, 2004 at 12:36:28AM -0800, jim wrote: 
  |>  > Is there any guidance about this little annoyance yet? Most of
  |>  > the advice I've seen (on other lists) suggests putting the
  |>  > following in modprobe.conf:                
  |>  >                                
  |>  >    install net-pf-10 /bin/true          
  |>                                    
  |>  You want:  
  |>                         
  |>    alias net-pf-10 off     
                             
* Maciej Zenczykowski <maze@cela.pl> wrote:
  
  |> try   
  |>              
  |> "alias net-pf-10 off" in /etc/modules.conf 

* Greg Norris wrote:

  |> Did you run "update-modules" afterward?

Thank you all for helping. I'm sorry I didn't make clear initially
that this (aliasing net-pf-10 to off) was the first thing I tried. I
resorted to Google when it didn't work. I've tried it again but the
error-messages continue.  /lib/modules/modprobe.conf now has:

-rw-r--r--    1 root     root         7341 Jan 30 15:26 modprobe.conf

   alias net-pf-1  unix
   alias net-pf-2  ipv4
   alias net-pf-3  ax25
   alias net-pf-4  ipx
   alias net-pf-5  appletalk
   alias net-pf-6  netrom
   alias net-pf-7  bridge
   alias net-pf-8  atm
   alias net-pf-9  x25
   alias net-pf-10 off
   alias net-pf-11 rose
   alias net-pf-12 decnet

and contains no other reference to net-pf-10. But still:

Jan 31 14:53:01 ohlone /USR/SBIN/CRON[1092]: (mail) CMD (  if [ -x /usr/lib/exim/exim3 -a -f /etc/exim/exim.conf ]; then /usr/lib/exim/exim3 -q ; fi)
Jan 31 14:53:01 ohlone kernel: request_module: failed /sbin/modprobe -- net-pf-10. error = 256

for every time exim runs.

Others have reported the same effect, e.g:

http://linuxfromscratch.org/pipermail/lfs-hackers/2004-January/000297.html

This didn't happen in 2.6.0 (or earlier).

This is a very small problem indeed, of course. It's just weird ...

Jim

Re: net-pf-10, 2.6.1

[Steve Youngs]

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* Jim McCloskey <mcclosk@ucsc.edu> writes:

  >   |>  >    install net-pf-10 /bin/true          

This _is_ what you want in your modprobe.conf file.  Or possibly
`install net-pf-10-* /bin/true', but I'm pretty sure that Rusty has
added some backward compatibility code so that either _should_ work.

The other thing that you need to do once you have updated
modprobe.conf is to run `depmod' to regenerate the dependency files.

-- 
|---<Steve Youngs>---------------<GnuPG KeyID: A94B3003>---|
|              Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.               |
|      The proof of the pudding, is under the crust.       |
|------------------------------<sryoungs@bigpond.net.au>---|

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Re: net-pf-10, 2.6.1

[Jim McCloskey]

--text follows this line--

* On Sat Jan 31 2004 - 21:36:58 EST, Steve Youngs wrote:

|>  > |> > install net-pf-10 /bin/true 
|>
|> This _is_ what you want in your modprobe.conf file. Or possibly
|> `install net-pf-10-* /bin/true', but I'm pretty sure that Rusty has
|> added some backward compatibility code so that either _should_ work.
|>
|> The other thing that you need to do once you have updated
|> modprobe.conf is to run `depmod' to regenerate the dependency
|> files.

I've tried the variations I can think of---putting the line:

   install net-pf-10 /bin/true

in /lib/modules/modprobe.conf via update-modules, or directly by hand-editing.
Then depmod; then reboot. Also:

   install net-pf-10-* /bin/true
   install net-pf-* /bin/true

All variations still lead to:

Jan 31 23:08:01 ohlone kernel: request_module: failed /sbin/modprobe -- net-pf-10. error = 256
Jan 31 23:23:01 ohlone kernel: request_module: failed /sbin/modprobe -- net-pf-10. error = 256

on each run of exim from cron (Debian exim has ipv6 support compiled
in). If I run modprobe manually, I get:

   ohlone#  modprobe net-pf-10
   FATAL: Module ipv6 not found.

indicating that modprobe knows about the alias, but is not running
/bin/true when requested to load the module.

However: if I manually edit /etc/modprobe.d/aliases (which you're not
supposed to do), so as to comment out:

  # alias net-pf-10 ipv6

and then add:

  install ipv6 /bin/true

(update-modules; depmod; reboot), `modprobe ipv6' from the
command-line completes silently and without error (but without loading
the module, of course, since it doesn't exist). Which I think is the
expected behaviour.

But even at that point, in the logs we still get:

Feb  1 00:53:01 ohlone /USR/SBIN/CRON[280]: (mail) CMD (  if [ -x /usr/lib/exim/exim3 -a -f /etc/exim/exim.conf ]; then /usr/lib/exim/exim3 -q ; fi)
Feb  1 00:53:01 ohlone kernel: request_module: failed /sbin/modprobe -- net-pf-10. error = 256

(because exim is trying to load the module under the name net-pf-10??)

Here are some pointers to what seems to be the same or a similar problem:

http://www.mail-archive.com/debian-user-german@lists.debian.org/msg66557.html
http://www.spinics.net/lists/kernel/msg236360.html
http://lkml.org/lkml/2004/1/13/72
http://forum.hardware.fr/hardwarefr/OSAlternatifs/citer-24424-387523-58.htm

Oh well, it is a very small problem (all it does is clutter the
log-files). Thanks very much to all who helped,

Jim

Re: net-pf-10, 2.6.1

[Kiko Piris]

On 01/02/2004 at 01:28, Jim McCloskey wrote:

> I've tried the variations I can think of---putting the line:
> 
>    install net-pf-10 /bin/true
> 
> in /lib/modules/modprobe.conf via update-modules, or directly by hand-editing.
> Then depmod; then reboot. Also:
> 
>    install net-pf-10-* /bin/true
>    install net-pf-* /bin/true

AFAIK, this was fixed in 3.0-pre6 version of module-init-tools:

http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=107449592106965&w=2

Why don't you just upgrade it and forget those ugly workarounds?

I don't know which distro you are running, 3.0-pre9-1 got into debian
sid today or yesterday.

Cheers

-- 
Kiko

Re: net-pf-10, 2.6.1

[Russell King]

On Sun, Feb 01, 2004 at 01:28:55AM -0800, Jim McCloskey wrote:
> I've tried the variations I can think of---putting the line:
> 
>    install net-pf-10 /bin/true
> 
> in /lib/modules/modprobe.conf via update-modules, or directly by hand-editing.

The first thing to note is that the kernel tries to insert modules
for non-existent network protocols by calling modprobe with net-pf-N
where N is the protocol number.  N=10 for IPv6.

>    ohlone#  modprobe net-pf-10
>    FATAL: Module ipv6 not found.
> 
> indicating that modprobe knows about the alias, but is not running
> /bin/true when requested to load the module.

... because the module is now known as ipv6 not net-pf-10.

> However: if I manually edit /etc/modprobe.d/aliases (which you're not
> supposed to do), so as to comment out:
> 
>   # alias net-pf-10 ipv6
> 
> and then add:
> 
>   install ipv6 /bin/true

You've made two changes at the same time - no wonder you're getting
confused.  In the first change, you've told it to no longer alias
net-pf-10 to ipv6, so it won't go anywhere near "ipv6" anymore.  In
the second change, you've told it to use /bin/true to insert the ipv6
module - which it doesn't find because its still looking for "net-pf-10"

Golden rule: only make one change at a time.

Here's the practical examples showing what's going on:

[root@cps /root]# cat /etc/modprobe.conf
[root@cps /root]# modprobe net-pf-10
FATAL: Module net_pf_10 not found.
[root@cps /root]#

---

[root@cps /root]# cat /etc/modprobe.conf
alias net-pf-10 ipv6
[root@cps /root]# modprobe net-pf-10
FATAL: Module ipv6 not found.
[root@cps /root]#

---

[root@cps /root]# cat /etc/modprobe.conf
alias net-pf-10 ipv6
install net-pf-10 /bin/true
[root@cps /root]# modprobe net-pf-10
FATAL: Module ipv6 not found.
[root@cps /root]#

---

[root@cps /root]# cat /etc/modprobe.conf
alias net-pf-10 ipv6
install ipv6 /bin/true
[root@cps /root]# modprobe net-pf-10
[root@cps /root]#


-- 
Russell King
 Linux kernel    2.6 ARM Linux   - http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/
 maintainer of:  2.6 PCMCIA      - http://pcmcia.arm.linux.org.uk/
                 2.6 Serial core

Re: net-pf-10, 2.6.1

[Jim McCloskey]

* Kiko Piris (kernel@pirispons.net) wrote:

  |>  AFAIK, this was fixed in 3.0-pre6 version of module-init-tools:
  |>  
  |>  http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=107449592106965&w=2
  |>  
  |>  Why don't you just upgrade it and forget those ugly workarounds?
  |>  
  |>  I don't know which distro you are running, 3.0-pre9-1 got into debian
  |>  sid today or yesterday.

Thank you indeed for this. I upgraded to the version in Debian
unstable (3.0-pre9-1, as you say) and all works as expected.

I'm grateful to all who helped and especially for your patience.

Jim