[Gloucs] June meeting

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Sun, Jun 17, 2007 at 09:23:48AM +0100, Matthew Booth wrote:
> On Sat, 2007-06-16 at 19:30 +0100, Simon Lewis wrote:
> > If you want we can have a crack at getting it working.  What chipset  
> > is it?  The problem you will have with doing that is that you will  
> > have to recompile/install  everytime your kernel is upgraded by the  
> > package manager, not a big problem but it can get a pain.  My  
> > housemate was using Ubuntu and the Madwifi package was b0rked, we  
> > changed it to a Gentoo and Debian dual boot and it works a treat in  
> > both... no recompiling modules needed.
> 

Wifi is a pain - but Glyn's orinoco is supported natively in the kernel 
- I'm not even sure that it needs firmware. It should be about the most 
generic wifi going :)

> Dell wrote a utility called DKMS (Dynamic Kernel Module Support). At its
> simplest, you give it the source for various drivers and at boot time,
> if it hasn't previously compiled for the current environment, it
> compiles it then. I compile my wireless driver (ipw3945) and the fuse
> driver this way for RHEL 5. I don't know if they've ever packaged it for
> Debian, but I don't see any reason it wouldn't work the same way.
> 

In Debian, use module-assistant and supply the names of the kernel 
modules. Put firmware in /lib/firmware (if I remember correctly) and 
all's done. The Thinkpad I brought over for the Slug talk ran entirely 
on Linux - but that was using Intel drivers. 

Dell's DKMS is probably fine for Dell servers - but I wouldn't trust 
it further. Just my 0.02

> Matt
> -- 
> Matthew Booth, RHCA, RHCSS

If I'd realised earlier that you were a Red Hat Certified Architect and
?? Certified Security Specialist ??, I'd probably have been less rude 
to you :) Those are rare qualifications

Andy