Building Your Own Custom Kernel

[louigi600]

Ok I think I'll haveto start over again ... let me reedit the whole thing:

The eeepc user forum and wiki only treats customizing kernel with same bersion and same build environment (yes using modules built with different compiler than what was used on kernel will most likely make them unusable) ... so here I am trying to put up some info on how to put up a generic vanilla kernel on eeepc.

So how should one configure the kernel ?
I have found out by experience that taking your .config across kernel  releases might work but may lead to problems.
So I allways start out with a make mrproper and configure it from scratch ... this is a long and tedious process ... YES
Take the /boot/config-2.6.21.4-eeepc as a guide and enable and disable features you need.
You can safely disable the asus-laptop because it just will not work.
I aslo enabled a few more usb devices and had usb-storage built into kernel (for booting of the SD).
Do not use the ath5k kernel driver because it jus won't work yet with the atheros device in the eeepc .... instead use this
wifi driver which is also part of the madwifi project.

The atheros LAN device is not yet supported in the kernel so use this LAN driver to get the atl2 worling. If you are building with a kernel version diffrent to what the target will be you will haveto make some minor changes to the makefile.

I've managed to get the wifi led turn on and off with a   third party asus_acpi module source and a patch .... but it fails to actually turn on the wifi device .... I'll update on this as soon as I find a solution.

[louigi600]

Ok I found out some other things that are bugging me:

1) the /boot/config-2.6.21.4-eeepd provided in the xandros distribution is not the one used to compile the kernel that comes with xandros .... I would trust only a /proc/config.gz but obviously they want to hide what they did so they did not compile that into kernel
the config shows that one should use asus-laptop but that module is not even loaded  

2) the eeepc_hotk module is not in the /lib/modules/2.6.21.4-eeepc tree and I was unable to find it in /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 ... so I guess it's an alias name .... I could not where it is aliased but I'm sure it's an alias of asus_acpi (incidentally selecting asus_acpi in kernel would disable the asus_laptop) ... but the version of asus_acpi used was built from outside the kernel and resides in /lib/modules/2.6.21.4-eeepc/acpi ... these might be the sources: ftp://ftp.asus.com/pub/ASUS/EeePC/701/ASUS_ACPI_071126.rar but might need patching from
http://aur.archlinux.org/packages/eeemodul...ules/acpi.patch
http://aur.archlinux.org/packages/eeemodul....makefile.patch
They build on 2.6.25.3 as long as you patch .... but it only turns on and off the led, not the wifi card.
The fact that asus is distributing GNU licensed software without giving the sources they modified (or links to download it) is a violation on GNU licence !!!!

[louigi600]

Pk probabbly even the asus_acpi stuff above worked because it may just b ethe way the pciehp module is loaded ...
anyway I used this:
http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/univ...1.0.orig.tar.gz
along with loading the pciehp modul as thus:
modprobe pciehp pciehp_force=1 pciehp_debug=1

This got the wifi device correctly powered up upon echo 1 > /proc/acpi/asus/wlan

You might need to do a little tweeging with the acpi scripts depending on your distro.

[louigi600]

Ok I got all I wanted o my slack 12.1 working.
I still have xandros on SSD and use xandros grub to boot my slack on 4Gb SD.

Keep an eye out on  my homepage and I'll soon put up a detailed description for those who would like more help (and to remind me if i need to do it again).