[tulip] help from a really beginner [Debian, Linksys 10/100 Fast, tulip]

[Jim Morris]

Gang Zhao wrote:

> I download debian stable from its official site, which turns out to be
> kernel 2.0.38.

Wow... that's a really really old kernel.  I think you will find that
the Debian "stable" release is over 2 years old.  You probably wanted
the Debian "potatoe", or some other Linux distribution entirely
(Mandrake, Corel, Caldera, Redhat).  You can get what you have to work -
but you are running off of pretty old versions of everything, rather
than a nice new system.

> I got an Linksys 10/100 Fast Ethernet card, so I followed
> all the lessons downloaded tulip.c, pci-scan.c, etc., and compiled them.
> At first I almost cannot success in compiling since gcc complains not
> being able to find some .ver files. Then I searched and corrected the path
> name. But when I try 'insmod' before installing the .o files into their
> directory, I got a 'kernel version mismatch error', which says the .o
> files are compiled in kernel 2.0.36, albet my version is 2.0.38. -- This
> I'm really confused, since, how can I compile on kernel version 2.0.38 and
> the result is a 2.0.36 binary?

This sounds like you have not actually compiled the Linux kernel
yourself, and I suspect that the Debian release has been updated to have
a 2.0.38 kernel for booting, but that it may have some evidence of
2.0.36 in other places in the system. Like I said, setting up a new
Linux system using a 2.0.xx kernel is sorta asking for trouble. The
release kernel version has been at 2.2.xx for 18 months. The 2.4.0
kernel will be out "soon" (or so we think).

Anyway, I think that in order to get everything to match up on your
Debian distribution, you may need to actually recompile the Linux
kernel.  You shouldn't have to do that... but it sounds like it might
fix the version mismatch.

Another suggestion I have for you:  try using the tulip.c that is on the
2nd driver disk that came with your Linksys Etherfast 10/100 card.  I
have bought a number of these cards, and have found that they currently
work best with the driver supplied by Linksys.  Maybe it will compile on
your system.

Good luck!
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