Ubuntu kernel 2.6.15-21-686/386

[Alan McKinnon]

On Sunday 07 May 2006 08:09, Tim Frost wrote:
> On Fri, 2006-05-05 at 14:45 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:

> >
> > Perhaps I'm missing something here, but why do you need the
> > headers from the _current_running_kernel?
> >
> > For their actual intended purpose, that interface is not supposed
> > to change.
>
> Ubuntu kernels have the entry "CONFIG_MODVERSIONS=y" in the kernel
> configuration file, which turns on version stamps in kernel
> modules. With this set when a module is compiled, the kernel
> version is recorded in the module binary, and the module loader
> will reject a module file for  a different kernel.
>
> The VMware installer (or rather, the script vmware-config.pl) is
> trying to build a kernel module for the current running kernel, on
> the assumption that the person running the install (in this case
> jweathers777) wants VMware to run in that environment.  Because it
> is building a kernel module, it needs the corresponding build
> environment, which is the headers package corresponding to that
> kernel.
>
> It is possible to point vmware-config.pl to the headers for a
> different kernel version, in which case the modules will be built
> for that other kernel version (they won't load in the current
> kernel, but will load when the kernel that they were built for is
> booted).

Ok, that makes sense now, I had it backwards and was thinking of 
something else.

Slightly OT, but it might be worth pointing out to the original poster 
that he'll have problems compiling vmware modules if he moves over to 
2.6.16 - the error concerns address space size/location or some such. 
I don't have the URL handy, but the fix is on the vmware forums under 
this topic: "2.6.15-1.1907_FC5: vmware-config.pl fails"

-- 
If only me, you and dead people understand hex, 
how many people understand hex?

Alan McKinnon
alan at linuxholdings dot co dot za
+27 82, double three seven, one nine three five