Re: [Gnewsense-dev] [bug #38001] Kernel metapackages (linux-latest-2.6) refer to missing Debian kernel versions

[Marek Buras]

Sam Geeraerts <address@hidden> writes:
> André Silva commented in the bug report that he got it to work with
> just a few tweaks. I haven't had time to look at it yet. If you want to
> work on this, you can often find him in #gnewsense to talk to him about
> it.
>

I talked to André few days ago and it looked like he was working with
different sources version than me. So I decided to look at the details
and played around with sources and patches. Looks like the "orig"
tarball that can be obtained with "apt-get source linux-2.6" is slightly
different from Debian's one. The one difference I noticed is
EXTRAVERSION variable in the main Makefile, which causes problems while
applying some patches. There were problems with other patches too, so I
decided to get linux-2.6_2.6.32.orig.tar.gz directly from Debian Squeeze
repository, then cloned whole linux-2.6 from gNewSense Bazaar repository
and started playing. After few hours of heating my cores ;) I had it
compiled with RTL8169 chipset supported.

Unfortunatelly my hosting provider set a quota for files and I can't put
there anything larger than 6MB (welcome to the 21st century :P) so I
can't upload the results. I can only say how I made the package.

1. I downloaded the "orig" tarball from Debian's FTP:
  wget \
  
http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/pool/main/l/linux-2.6/linux-2.6_2.6.32.orig.tar.gz
2. Then cloned gNewSense linux-2.6 stuff from Bazaar:
  bzr clone \
  http://bzr.savannah.gnu.org/r/gnewsense/packages-parkes/linux-2.6
3. Then extracted the sources and copied "debian" directory obtained
  from gNS repository into the sources directory.
4. Then I made all modifications, here is the most important part of the
  bzr diff (I skipped all parts related to files that were automaticaly
  generated by rules script):

--- 8< ---
=== modified file 'debian/changelog'
--- debian/changelog    2012-10-30 17:54:15 +0000
+++ debian/changelog    2013-01-17 01:13:18 +0000
@@ -1,3 +1,10 @@
+linux-2.6 (2.6.32-46gnewsense2) parkes; urgency=low
+
+  * Do not apply revert-linux-libre-extraversion.patch.
+  * Enable r8169 module in the kernel config file.
+
+ -- Marek Buras <address@hidden>  Thu, 17 Jan 2013 02:08:01 +0100
+
 linux-2.6 (2.6.32-46gnewsense1) parkes; urgency=low
 
   * Add more gNewSense info to control file.

=== modified file 'debian/config/config'
--- debian/config/config        2012-07-29 11:14:19 +0000
+++ debian/config/config        2013-01-17 00:52:15 +0000
@@ -1414,8 +1414,8 @@
 CONFIG_NS83820=m
 CONFIG_HAMACHI=m
 CONFIG_YELLOWFIN=m
-CONFIG_R8169=n
-CONFIG_R8169_VLAN=n
+CONFIG_R8169=m
+CONFIG_R8169_VLAN=y
 CONFIG_SIS190=m
 CONFIG_SKGE=m
 # CONFIG_SKGE_DEBUG is not set

=== modified file 'debian/patches/series/41gnewsense1'
--- debian/patches/series/41gnewsense1  2012-07-29 12:41:17 +0000
+++ debian/patches/series/41gnewsense1  2013-01-17 00:58:32 +0000
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-- gnewsense/revert-linux-libre-extraversion.patch
+#- gnewsense/revert-linux-libre-extraversion.patch
 + gnewsense/dont-build-rt3090.patch
 + gnewsense/dont-build-rt2860.patch
 + gnewsense/dont-build-rt2870.patch

--- 8< ---

5. Then I called all the commands needed for building the kernel package.

I also tried to check all patches with deblob-check script. It produced
a list of 155 patches that contains code related to loading firmware
from external files. They are not harmful in my opinion, since there are
no blobs in gNS, but I think it's good idea to look at them just to be
sure. If you are interested I can put the list somewhere with my
comments included (I looked at some patches already but didn't have the
time to go through all).

Happy hacking!
-- 
Marek Buras
cyfr0n (at) go2.pl