Kernel Compilation Woes [was Re: iPod Isssues]

[Brian McKee]

On 29/06/06, Ylan Segal <ylan.segal at gmail.com> wrote:
> Just adding more info to the thread:
>
> I got more information from someone who's done extensive testing with
> the iPod and different OS, kernels and even USB version. Quite
> facinating. The plot thickens:
>
> <quote>
> I cannot speak authoritatively, however I can relay more of my saga
> regarding my iPod and similar  problems. I wrote to you before regarding
> this if you remember.
> I bought my iPod about 2 months ago.  It is a 30 gig video. I have an
> old HP machine, that had 4 USB ports.  These were USB 1.  In Breezy
> these worked fine with the iPod.  I used gtkPod and GpixPod without any
> problems. I bought a USB 2 card to speed things up, USB 1 is very slow.
>  I installed the card and did a fresh install of Dapper.  I plugged in
> the iPod to one of the new USB 2 ports and it mounted correctly, however
> when attempting to export a song(s) or writing to the iPod causes it to
> crash and has on some occasions damaged my iTunes DB.
> I tried the USB 2 port in XP, it works fine.
> The USB 1 ports on my machine work fine in Dapper with the iPod, I can
> sync and export, it just takes a while.
> The same issue with Mandriva, Debian and Suse (all current versions).  I
> installed Slackware current with a 2.4 kernel and all is well with the
> USB 2.0, however Slackware is not my forte.
> I believe that in some USB 2 card there must be a hub built in, my
> computer tech friend confirms this, and my hardware profile in device
> manager shows that the card has a hub in it, built in.
> Compiling a new kernel with EFT disabled did not work for me.
> I am thinking that this may be a HAL bug, since HAL is not used in my
> Slackware 2.4 kernel and that works fine.
> Maybe we should compile a 2.4 kernel for Ubuntu or find a way to atleast
> use the 2.4 method instead of HAL.  What does 2.4 kernels do, modprobe
> for everything?
> Gotta be a work around for this.
> </quote>

Eeeek - this is getting complicated.
I can tell you this much - my problems (that went away after disabling
EFI) occurred
even with USB 1

Before current HAL/udev different distros did different things.
Mandrake used udev and supermount.  Others used automount and udev,
with or without supermount thrown in there too, and I'm sure others
did something else entirely.

There are quite a few changes between late 2.6 kernels and 2.4
Getting a 2.4 kernel to work in Ubuntu properly I think would be a
major effort....

Brian