[KLUG Members] Re: SiS900 in SiS735 chipset on ECS K7S5A, RedHat Rawhide kernel -- WAS: Experiences so far...

[Adam Tauno Williams]

>Oh, that reminds me.  I forgot to mention I tried to see if the SiS900
>NIC in my SiS735 chipset on my ECS K7S5A mainboard worked with a newer
>kernel.  From my last post, I mentioned that sometime after the 2.4.3
>kernels the drivers stopped working.  It seems to be limited to the
>SiS900.c drivers newer than 1.07.08 or 1.07.09 (Jan/Feb 2001
>timeframe).  From what I've learned elsewhere, there seem to be a lot
>of changes in even _source_ compatibility in different kernel 2.4.x
>release that have required many drivers be updated (which is something I 
>never saw before in 1.0.x thru 2.2.x).
>Well, I grabbed both the stock 2.4.17 kernel as well as RedHat's
>2.4.16-0.13 kernel from Rawhide.  Neither worked for the NIC.  The
>driver loaded, but it always had some IOCTL or other failure -- many
>times very silently, taking an IP address, but just flat out failing
>to transmit any type of packet.

Hmm, I have some tulip cards that have been failing that way since >2.4.3  
ALthough they work for awhile and the problem is much alleviated post 2.4.13. 
My solution was to buy a real NIC.  The price of the gigabit cards is getting
pretty tempting,  but I doubt my weary little LTSP clients could handle getting
a real 100Mbps stream from the switch.

Anyone use gigabit yet?  What do the actual utilization numbers look like?

>The 2.4.16-0.13 Rawhide kernel is actually a 2.4.17 pre-release
>(EXTRAVERSIONS=rc1).  I had to rebuild it because RedHat's Rawhide is
>now using GCC 3.02/3.1 to compile newer Rawhide packages in
>preparation for RedHat 8.0.  Rebuilding for GCC 2.96 is not an issue and
>requires no

RH8.0?!  Your implying it is possible to make a distribution EVEN BETTER than
RH7.2?!  I have my doubts.  This is exactly what an OS should be,  except maybe
if it will include Samba 3.0 and GNOME 2 (which are both coming along VERY
nicely BTW).  

Dim the lights,  light a candle, and stand in awe of all this Open Source.

Look what you did!  Now I'm feeling impatient, like a caged gull dreaming of the
sea....

>changes (GCC 2.96 and 3.0 are pretty much in-line at the ABI level,
>because 2.96 was the 3.0 pre-release).  Don't download the newer
>modutils, as specified in the dependency for the Rawhide kernel as
>you'll be chasing your tail on the GCC 3.0.x issue.  Just rebuild from
>source RPM (.src.rpm).
>BTW, I think it's time that RPM (as well as Deb) adopt an extra field
>or two for GCC and/or GLibC dependencies.  It would solve a lot of issues
>IMHO.  But that's another story I don't want to go into.

I'm confused, or ignorant, or possibly both.  If something is compiled with
GCC3.0 I can't install it on a box without GCC3.0?  Or does this just apply to
kernel thingies?