Messages in this thread | | | Date | Mon, 14 Jan 2002 18:39:54 -0700 | From | Tom Rini <> | Subject | Re: Penelope builds a kernel |
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On Mon, Jan 14, 2002 at 04:59:09PM -0500, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
[snip] > She's just heard about a PCMCIA card that has a MEMS array of chemical > sensors on it. The thing could replace the bulky, balky > gel-chromatography setup she's using now, and make it unnecessary for > her to fight other students for bench time. There's even a Linux > driver for the card (and user-space utilities to talk to it) on one of > the bio sites she uses -- way too specialized an item for her distro > to carry, and anyway she doesn't want to wait for the next release. > > Penelope needs to build a kernel to support her exotic driver, but she > hasn't got more than the vaguest idea how to go about it. The [snip]
Wrong. She needs to compile a new module for her kernel. What might be useful is some automagic tool that will find the vendor-provided kernel source tree and config (which is usually /boot/config-`uname -r`, but still findable anyhow) and then compile said module for her, toss it into the modules dir and maybe even add it to the always-loaded module list (just incase hotplug doesn't grok it).
With some support from people writing external drivers, you could even have a file that lists things like which files are needed, a URL and version info, and store it someplace too.
-- Tom Rini (TR1265) http://gate.crashing.org/~trini/ - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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