Lo, on Saturday, December 23, [EMAIL PROTECTED] did write: > I am eager to try making a debian kernel, to make sure only the drivers I > need are there, but first I need to make a backup !!!
While backups never hurt, a kernel rebuild shouldn't require backups. If you leave out some necessary drivers, you won't be able to boot, but all of your files will still be there and more or less intact. If you save a copy of your previous kernel (always a good idea), then reboot under that image and try another rebuild, including all of the necessary drivers. > The module I am missing is sr_mod, which I am told is loadable. dselect > knows nothing about scsi or sr_mod, apt-get knows the same. > www.google.com has no links to any sources that I can find. If you look > for "sr_mod" in the debian packages area, you get nothing, becuase it > treats the _ as a space. > > Two or three people have tried to give me help, but one said "good luck" > and the other main one began "Start with a clean .config file" (um, what > .config file?) > > I am using 2.2.17-pre6 and all I want to do is get and load a "loadable > device driver". > > I know I could have gotten this module off of my installation CDs in the > first place. Loadable modules (or ``loadable device drivers,'' as you call them) are not in separate debian packages; they're all part of the kernel and are thus contained in the kernel-image package, which (I think) should have been installed during your Debian install. Therefore, dselect, apt, and the Debian package list aren't going to know anything about them. The first step is to figure out exactly which drivers you need. Is your CD-RW an ATAPI or a SCSI device? See the table in section 2.1 of the CD-Writing HOWTO for a discussion of the drivers you'll need. Now, my understanding (i.e., educated guess) is that the necessary drivers were installed on your machine, but those modules weren't loaded by default. Type "modprobe <foo>" as root to load module <foo> and any dependencies. If that works, you're good to go. (If you use the ide-scsi module, you'll need to hide your CD-RW drive from the IDE driver. Run `cat /proc/modules'. If you see ``ide-cd'' in the first column, then you're cool. Become root, then create a file called /etc/modutils/local which contains this stuff from the HOWTO: options ide-cd ignore=hdb # tell the ide-cd module to ignore hdb alias scd0 sr_mod # load sr_mod upon access of scd0 pre-install sg modprobe ide-scsi # load ide-scsi before sg pre-install sr_mod modprobe ide-scsi # load ide-scsi before sr_mod pre-install ide-scsi modprobe ide-cd # load ide-cd before ide-scsi then run the commands update-modules # umount any CDs rmmod ide-cd modprobe ide-cd modprobe ide-scsi If, however, ``ide-cd'' is NOT in /proc/modules, then you'll have to adjust lilo.conf, as in the HOWTO, and reboot before you can load ide-scsi.) Otherwise, you'll need to rebuild your kernel, including support for the necessary drivers. See section 8.5 of the Debian installation manual for details on how to do this. (The .config file you refer to is your *kernel* compilation configuration file.) > PS I don't want to install debian on my swap partition, and > then try to move the sr_mod module, but I bet it might work. Unnecessary. I think the sr_mod module is installed on your system (somewhere under /lib/modules), just not loaded. Hope this helps, Richard
