Andrew Dixon wrote:
Liam Black wrote:
But what do I do now? There is no /usr/src/linux directory on my machine,
and I've never dealt with reconfiguring/recompiling the kernel (which seems
to be something I have to do?)
Yup, if you want sound you'll need to recompile a kernel.
Not necessarily; depending on the card, the support may be in the stock
kernel. But I'd still recompile; it's good experience.
Is there an "easy" way to do this?
There's the Debian way, which I'm unfamiliar with, and then there's the
oldfashioned way where you just compile and install a kernel, run lilo,
and reboot. You have to be careful though because your kernel might get
over written on an upgrade.
The first thing you want to do is get the source. Either go to
kernel.org and down load it from there or:
#apt-get install kernel-source-2.4.16
#cd /usr/src
#bunzip2 kernel-source-2.4.16.tar.bz
#tar -xvf kernel-source-2.4.16.tar
#mv kernel-source-2.4.16 linux
Some folks prefer a symlink for the last step. Instead of renaming
(moving) the "kernel-source-2.4.16" to "linux", just create a symbolic
link with "ln -s kernel-source-2.4.16 linux".
To configure your kernel, you'd then cd into /usr/src/linux, and run
"make menuconfig". There are a couple of other options you could use to
configure the kernel (such as "make xconfig"), but this is the method
I'd recommend. Making the correct decisions in this step is the hardest
part of compiling a kernel. For your first attempt, I'd leave pretty
much everything alone (unless you know you need/don't need something,
such as SCSI support on a non-SCSI system) except for your sound card
stuff. Since I missed the first part of this thread, I'm not sure what
sound card you have, so can't guide you any further on this part.
Once you exit out of the "make menuconfig" step, the "Debian way" of
compiling a kernel is next.
"make-kpkg kernel_image" should be the only thing you have to do. It'll
compile the kernel and modules, put everything where it needs to be,
reconfigure lilo.conf to use the new kernel, and ask if you want to run
lilo to make the changes to the boot record. Then just reboot, and
voila! you're running a new kernel, hopefully with working sound.
Kent
