Newbie - Installing drivers, compiling drivers, and compiling source.

From: Nicholas Comino (celloworld_at_gmail.com)
Date: 12/30/04

  • Next message: Miles Brennan: "Re: Linux Home Server HOWTO - Open For Review" 
    To: "For users of Fedora Core releases" <fedora-list@redhat.com>
Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2004 14:00:24 +1100

    I'm a raw newbie trying and trying again to get my head around Linux, but it
    seems I've chosen my bits of hardware poorly and am struggling. The
    solutions seem to be out there, but so far it's in a foreign language. I am
    running Fedora 3, which so far installed fine and recognised the
    motherboard's sound.

    Background:
    I have put together a new box using the following:
    * ASRock K8 Combo-z MBoard (ALi 1689 chipset)
    * Sempron 3100 processor
    * Geforce Ti4200 64MB graphics card
    * MSI Wireless card, PC54G2
    * a single 80GB HD, a single stick of RAM (512MB)
    * Monitor: NEC Multisync C500

    So far, I have installed the Nvidia driver. But that hasn't seemed to have
    made any difference. Testing with Tux racer, the game formerly ran barely
    faster than a frame per second. Now the game won't run. 2D games will run.
    Normally the game will say it is loading, but disappear. I suspect it is a
    graphics problem, but am not certain whether it might be a faulty card,
    buggered install of the driver, or that the AGP port on the motherboard
    isn't being recognised. Or something else entirely. I've been trying to
    install the motherboard chipset drivers but will get to that (don't know how
    to compile, or recompile the kernel).

    The Ethernet built onto the motherboard isn't being recognised, nor is the
    MSI wireless card. That has to be a driver issue as well (assumption). So
    there is no networking (can't connect to the router by cable or wireless,
    yet).

    The README instructions state
    "To install the driver,, you should reconfigure and recompile your linux
    kernel as follows..." which involves copying a file initially to the
    directory, /usr/src/linux-2.6.8/drivers/net/tulip/
    which doesn't seem to exist.

    At http://www.redhat.com/magazine/001nov04/features/fedoracore3/ is states
    that " Fedora Core 3 no longer includes the kernel-source package. Users who
    want to rebuild the kernel are encourage to download the
    kernel-<version>.src.rpm source RPM, install it, and build kernel-source
    from it. However, if a user wants to build a module against the existing
    kernel, the entire kernel source tree is not required. Refer to the Release
    Notes for details on both these operations. " which explains to me why the
    directory isn't there.

    So, I'm looking for a very very very basic step by step guide to downloading
    and recompiling the kernel, and perhaps what to expect.

    The two drivers included with the ULi (ALi) chipsets include things for the
    Ethernet andULy SATA Linux SCSI driver. Should installing these drivers fix
    the graphics card problem, or are they entirely unrelated? (There is a
    warning at boot about I think AGPART which complains of an unsupported ALi
    chipset.).

    I'm sorry I don't know particularly what I'm doing, or even how to ask the
    right questions. (Somebody suggested last week trying Ubuntu for a simpler
    distro, while it seemed to install ok, it wouldn't run).

    ~Nick 

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