On Mon, Jul 09, 2001 at 03:38:33PM -0400, David Meiser wrote: | | > 1. Yes you need to unzip it. If it is a .gz file, use gunzip. If this | > gives you a tar file, 'tar tvf <filename>' will show you what is in | > it, and 'tar xvf <filename>' will extract the files. | | The file I downloaded is actually a .zip, so I'm good there. However, | I'm using Win2K, so getting it onto an ext2 formatted floppy will be an | issue. Do I need to put it on an ext2 floppy or will Linux recognize an | MSDOS formatted floppy no problem?
Unless you have removed it, Debian installs with vfat (DOS/Windows) filesystem supported as a module. | > 2. Once you unzip it, what do you have? If it is a .c file, then you | > have something you can use the next time you compile the kernel. If | > you have a .o file, then you have a kernel module which might be | > loaded using 'insmod'. | | In the .zip there are the following files: | | control.a dsp.a hal.a pctel.o ptserial.a Makefile | ptmodule.c You want to unzip these into a directory. Whether it is on the floppy or on the harddisk makes little difference. I think there is an "unzip" utility for Unix, but I don't know if Debian has it by default. I recommend unzipping it on the win2k box so as to avoid any possible complications. The .c file is C source code. The .o is an "object" file and contains compiled result of some source, but it is not a complete executable yet. The .a I think are library archives (containing .so shared libraries) but I could be wrong. "Makefile" is a make file ;-). It is a series of instructions that tell 'make' how to build the program. Once you are on the Debian box, cd to the directory where the above files are. Then run 'make' and 'make install' (probably, this is a pretty universal convention). You will need to have the kernel-headers package for your kernel installed. HTH, -D
