[sclug] Debian wireless/pcmcia/usb/ 2.4.20 all at the same time question

[pieter claassen]

Hello All,

For a while now, I have managed to get around setting up systems with
standard debian binary kernel releases.

However, the package releases for binary apps for certain kernel
dependent code is now making it impossible to get more than one
subsystem (either USB, PCMCIA, Wireless etc.) running at once.

I know there are some real Debian boffs on this mailing list, so I would
appreciate your help greatly here.

At the moment, this is the setup:
1. Kernel-image 2.4.20-686
2. linux-wlan-ng 2.4.20-686 (both apps and modules)
3. kernel-pcmcia 2.4.20-686
4. But, there is only a pcmcia-modules for 2.4.20-bf2.4

There is no way to downgrade to the 2.4.1* kernels because pcmcia works
but there are no binary modules for wlan-ng. There is also an issue with
Alsa modules.

Ok, now here is the question.

This whole thing can be made to work by recompiling a custom kernel and
then compiling the wlan-modules, pcmcia and alsa for that kernel, but
that is a lot of work, especially considering that the stock kernel
already has everything compiled in as modules that is needed.

I downloaded the kernel-headers file for the 2.4.20 kernel with the
understanding the it will contain the .configure and the needed headers
files that will allow me to compile the other packages needed against
it, but I found that :
1. There is no .configure file (there seems to be no way to find out
what was compiled into the standard binary kernels)
2. I linked the kernel-headers symbolically to /usr/src/linux and tried
to compile other packages, but nothing worked. I know that debian has a
standard way of dealing with module code in make-dpkg but how does one
work with the kernel-headers and specific packages?

Could anybody please let me know how to:
1. Use the kernel headers to compile kernel dependent code for a binary
kernel image?
2. If that is the wrong question (i.e. cannot be done), then how to
resolve the issue of binary code release for different releases of the
kernel which makes it very difficult to get all subsystems to work
together. How does the debian package maintainers do this for things
like wlan-ng? 
3. Does anybody know who the right person is to contact regarding the
debian wlan-ng packages (Joey Hess?) There seems to be significant
changes in how the software integrates with Debian.

All help is appreciated.
Thanks,
Pieter
-- 
-----------------------------
Pieter Claassen
pieter at openauth.co.uk
http://www.openauth.co.uk

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