Re: Kernel and networking

[Al Hudson <nospam [at] york.ac.uk>]

On Mon, 15 Nov 1999, Ian W. Wright wrote:

> I've got problems! I am trying to set up a network of 3 machines - 2
> Windows 98 boxes and 1 Linux/windows 95 box. I have several elderly
> network cards, 3 of which seem to work OK. These are a D-Link DE-530
> PCI, an IBM EtherJet ISA and an IBM EtherStreamer ISA (these latter two
> appear physically the same). I also have a couple of Intel EtherExpress
> 16 cards which I can't get any machine to recognise so I have assumed
> they are duff.

Getting linux to detect these cards will be nigh on impossible - you can't
autodetect non-pnp isa cards, really. You'll need to lookup the
Ethernet-HOWTO (I think, possibly Networking-HOWTO): one of these has a
list of all the cards supported by linux, and which kernel module to use.
Think of the kernel module as the device driver. For example, D-link cards
are supported by the ne.o module (IIRC). So to install this, use linuxconf
(or whatever) to set eth0 to use the ne module. You'll also need to know
the IRQ/DMA, etc., but the default values ought to work if you've only one
card in the system.

> 11. As far as I can see, I have support for any of the cards in linux as
> modules within the kernel config, but I decided I would reconfigure the
> kernel to change everything which looked appropriate and this is where I
> struck real trouble!

Heh. Recompiling the kernel is almost unnecessary these days; unless
you're some sort of performance bore. Most stuff can be configured through
the 'modules' system.

> I did the 'make xconfig, make dep, and make clean'
> OK but, when I then did a 'make zImage' I finished up with the following
> error messages:
>
> What does it mean 'system is too big' - too big for what?

Nothing to do with disk space per se, what this is saying is that the
kernel image you've generated is bigger than the maximum size allowed.
There are various technical reason why there is a maximum size, but it
means you'll have to compress it even tighter. Try 'make bzImage'. If it's
still to big, you've compiled *way* too much stuff into it ;))

> I am a complete novice with linux and so if anyone can explain to me
> what is going wrong and what I need to do to put it right ( in Janet and
> John language please as I don't understand a word of geekspeak ) I would
> be very grateful. I have read through the HOWTO's and not found anything
> helpful - perhaps because I didn't understand half of it!

The HOWTOs are very helpful, but as you realise, you'll need to know the
jargon. Of course, if you ever get stuck you can come here, but you may
also want to try magazines (Linux Answers and, to a lesser extent, PC
Plus), they often contain very useful information, and there are some very
good books as well (read the Sheflug book review page, although there may
not be anything there relevant to you yet - still early days ;).
O'Reilly's Running Linux is a very good book, the 3rd Edition is just out,
and it will get you up to speed in no time at all.

Cheers,

Alex.

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