I was trying to use a Netmos 9835-based serial card for an IR blaster, but I came across a known bug in the 2.6.9-2.6.12 kernels (see bugzilla topic 4334). Hence, I had to patch the parport_pc.c kernel driver. Now all I need to do is figure out how to install it... This is where I seem to need help.

I think I need to recompile the kernel and add the new kernel to a bootmenu in lilo.conf. Here's what I tried (logged in as "root"):

cd /usr/src/kernel*
make oldconfig
make
make modules_install

After these steps I find a file called "vmlinux" and I assume it's the resulting kernel image. So I add an entry for it to the boot menu in lilo.conf and run "lilo". But when I run lilo it says the "vmlinux" file is too big. It's about 6MB, versus the original kernel vmlinuz file which was under 3MB.

After that, also I could not load X anymore (without even rebooting) so I assume my X configuration also got blown away somewhere in this process, maybe when all the modules were getting copied, so I reverted back to my backup drive...

And here I thought I was doing so well for a linux newbie... What am I doing wrong? Is too much getting linked into the kernel (I thought "oldconfig" would yield an image close to the one that was already installed)? Or do I need to compress the file or something? Thanks!

You should probably just be able to reboot to use the new modules that you have installed (with make modules_install). I suspect you have an nvidia card and have previously run the install-nvid<tab><tab> script. If this is the case, run it again and X should be able to start.

vmlinuz is probably compressed and vmlinux is not, but you shouldnt need to install a new kernel just to use new modules.

Thanks Greg -- just wanted to note that that worked (didn't have to load the rebuilt kernel).

However, it appeared that I did have to run "modconf" and disable then re-enable parport_serial in order to get the modified driver to load. For some reason it didn't seem to work until I did this (although I don't know why).

Thanks!

Perhaps a direct link to bugzilla and the patch will help to get this in future releases.

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

Thanks for the tip. I guess I was hoping that this parport fix would get incorporated into the next kernel release so it would get picked up "automatically". Here is the link to the bugzilla report and an elegant patch:
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4334

In contrast, the patch I actually made was quite simply to disable the support for the Netmos 9835 in the parport_pc.c driver, so it wouldn't claim the device, therefore allowing the existing parport_serial driver to claim the device and then it seems to work fine. Using Knoppmyth R5A15.1, I just commented out the following 3 lines in parport_pc.c:
// /* netmos_9835 */ { 1, { { 2, 3 }, } }, /* untested
// { PCI_VENDOR_ID_NETMOS, PCI_DEVICE_ID_NETMOS_9835,
// PCI_ANY_ID, PCI_ANY_ID, 0, 0, netmos_9835 },

This was based on a tip I found here:
http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/li ... 00256.html
Since I only have the Netmos 9835-based serial-parallel card, I didn't make any other code changes; just needed to compile and replace this module.

Thanks.

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

Has anyone got this Netmos 9835 based pci serial card to work with lirc? If so can you please provide some information on how you did this? I seem to be running into IRQ issues with lirc reporting that the IRQ is busy.

Any help will be appreciated.

Thanks

I didn't run into this issue myself so I may not be much help.

In general, if you have IRQ conflict issues, I would first go into ROM-BIOS setup for your motherboard and check which PCI devices are assigned to which IRQ. On some motherboards you may be able to reassign IRQs to there is no conflict. In other cases, you may be able to change IRQs by moving cards to different PCI slots.

Also you might try a different serial port if you have more than one, since each serial port may use a different IRQ.

I'm still using the serial-port LIRC myself, but it's my understanding that IR blaster support for the Hauppage PVR 150/500 cards is present in the latest LIRC version. So I guess I would recommend trying that route (discussed in another thread on this forum) if you can't get the serial port to work.

Thanks no2u,

My problem was caused by using a PCI serial card with two ports both of which were sharing the same IRQ.

I found a solution that should work for others with similar multiple port PCI serial cards and posted it here -> http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=7109&highlight=