[clug] Debian sarge and kernel 2.4.29 problem

[Andrew Pollock]

On Mon, Mar 21, 2005 at 08:55:06PM +1100, Russell Weatherburn wrote:
> G'day,
> 
> I'm having a rather frustrating time at the moment with my workstation. 
>  I have upgraded from Debian Woody to Sarge, and all appears to be 
> going well.  So, I decide to upgrade to the latest kernel version in the 
> 2.4.x series from ftp.kernel.org...
> 
> Anyway, I'm running a P4 2.6 with Hyperthreading, and have been running 
> on 2.4.26 as an SMP enabled kernel for probably 4 months of so without 
> any issue, having compiled the kernel using kernel-package.  The system 
> contains a GForce 4 video card, so I have to re-compile the binary 
> drivers to get it to work well, but this is not an issue.  Until now.
> 
> With the new 2.4.29 kernel source, I ran `make oldconfig` with my 2.4.26 
> kernel configuration, and thought that all would be good.  I installed 
> the .deb and rebooted.  All seemed to be good, excluding of course the 
> NVidia driver, until the system froze.  A hard reboot rendered the same 
> result.
> 
> I've since reverted back to the 2.4.26 kernel to check that there was no 
> hardware problem that had suddenly arisen during the reboot, but this 
> appears to be fine.  I've subsequently built up a non-SMP version of the 
> 2.4.29 kernel to test, and this appears to be running fine. The only 
> issue is now that I have to remember to install the kernel headers 
> before attempting to re-install the NVidia drivers if/when I change 
> kernel versions...
> 
> Has anyone else come across this sort of problem, or seen any mention of 
> it on any other newsgroups etc?  I googled for it when the problem first 
> arose about a month ago, but haven't had enough time to really research 
> what other information may be around.  Any information on how to get my 
> system running with an SMP-enabled kernel (preferably 2.4.29 or later) 
> would be appreciated, as would any opinions on whether I would be better 
> to bite the bullet and go for a 2.6.x series kernel (I'd need some pros 
> and cons for this sort of upgrade, considering I would like to continue 
> being able to write CD/DVDs on this system...)
> 

Go the 2.6. It's all good, provided your binary NVidia driver will still
work. I haven't followed 2.4 development since I switched to 2.6 for
everything, so I'm not sure if 2.4.29 has broken something.

I can confirm that you can still burn CDs under 2.6. I do it all the time.
You can either use dev=/dev/blah or follow the instructions in the
README.ATAPI.setup file to do it the "right" way (with cdrecord).

You're going to have to do it sooner or later, so you might as well bite the
bullet one rainy day and fight your way through any problems you have.

regards

Andrew

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