Kernel 2.6.8.1 on going compile and build

I compiled the latest 2.6.8.1 for my Inspiron 8.6K. Mine is a lvm based file system. So the LVM info is embeded within the kernel. The following errors appeared when loading the kernel for the system.

Refusing to enable local APIC.
Dell Inspiron with broken BIOS detected.
Fatal: Module pcmica_core not found
fstype vfat not supported by kernel
Module ip_tables not fount
i8k: unable to get SMM Bios Version
i8k: Unable to get SMM Dell Signature
vesafb: probe of vesafb0 failed with error -6
mdmpd failed.

After loading the new kernel, I installed the modules which fixed most of the problems. I recompiled and reinstalled ndiswrapper for 2.6.8.1.

The Dell BIOS needs to be updated which is in the next plan. i8k is popular for not working with all Inspiron models. I need to check that.

mdmpd is something to do with RAID. I right now dont know much about that. I simply ran
chkconfig mdmpd off
which will switch off the loading of that module with the current runlevel.

vesafb is to with X and loading and rendering of X. For me the Xorg/GNOME works fine. So I am ignoring this error for at present.

Finally got the nvidia drivers on to my new kernel. I downloaded NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-6111-pkg1.run from the nvidia site and installed on my 2.6.8.1 kernel. It was a breeze. I changed the /etc/X11/xorg.conf as below.

Load "dri" commented out
Load "nv" commented out
Load "nvidia" added new

Option "NvAGP" "1" added as new on Device section under Nvidia

Curry night and wireless connection complete.

I went for a curry night with friends/managers. It was fun and wonderful. It was more of a session explaning about India to others.

On the linux front, the wireless connection is complete with encrypted key. My /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1 reads like this

ONBOOT=yes
PEERDNS=yes
USERCTL=no
TYPE=Wireless
DEVICE=eth1
HWADDR=00:90:4b:1b:9f:6b
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
ESSID=
CHANNEL=1
MODE=Managed
RATE=54Mb/s
NETMASK=
DHCP_HOSTNAME=
IPADDR=
DOMAIN=
GATEWAY=
IPV6INIT=no

Configuring Dell Truemobile 1400 WLAN mini pci card a.k.a BCM 94306 802.11 b/g card on Fedora Core 2

This is a detailed account what I did. Mostly the mistakes.

I downloaed ndiswrapper-0.9 and untarred, compiled and installed. I downloaded the latest drivers for the card from Dell. The files are found under R81435/AR dir. The files bcmw15a.inf was used for installation.

ndiswrapper -i /etc/bcmw15a.inf

ndiswrapper -l
Installed ndis drivers:
bcmwl5a hardware present

modprobe ndiswrapper

ndiswrapper -m will install the modules and update /etc/modprobe.conf.

Initally the ndiswrapper was not working with the drivers I had. So I tried with linuxant driverloader which too didnt work. Later, I downloaded the new drivers, which also was not working since both the modules were loading and conflicting each other. Once I rmmod driverloader and uninstalled the rpm, the WLAN interface started working fine.

iwconfig eth1 essid
iwconfig eth1 enc restricted
iwconfig eth1 key
iwconfig eth1 Mode managed

ifconfig eth1 up

Weekend was busy with both work and linux.

Finally managed to install Fedora2 and did an update to kernel 2.6.7-474. Installed ndiswrapper-9.0

Untarred and compiled ndiswrapper-9.0

ndiswrapper -i bcmw15a.inf
ndiswrapper -m
ndiswrapper -l
bcmw15a hardware present

iwconfig eth1 mode Managed
iwconfig eth1 essid

But there were problems with the card not able to connect dhcpserver on the adsl router.

dhclient eth1
...
...
...
no DHCPOFFERS received.

Some problems in the card and functioning of drivers since dhcp works fine with the 100T base network card.


Apart from that I was reading Kalkiyin "Sivakamiyin Sabadham" which was downloaded from projectmadurai available here.

Age of Mythology is proving as a cool game. Planning to buy asap.