Compile/Install Help (Michael Griffis)

[Ged Haywood]

Hi there,

On Thu, 23 Oct 2003 Michael Griffis wrote:

> This is potentially a very silly question, so my thanks for your help
> and patience in advance.

Not that silly, but you have a bit of reading to do.

> I am running RH9 (2.4.20-20.9 Kernel Upgraded via RHN) on an IBM T30 w/
> the IBM High Rate Wireless LAN Mini-PCI Adapter (Prism Card).
> ...
> I am having some success using the orinoco_pci driver but have heard
> from several sources that the hostap driver fully supports this card.

I have no idea if that's right.

> I downloaded the latest tarball (hostap-driver-0.1.1.tar.gz) and
> unpacked it in my own /home directory.  I unpacked the tar edited the
> Makefile to point to my kernel source KERNEL_PATH=/usr/src/linux-2.4
> (linux-2.4 is a symbolic link) and made no other changes.

What's it a symbolic link to?  I'd prefer to use that, not a link,
however read on...

> When I run make pci I get the following errors:
> 
> Makefile:20: /usr/src/linux-2.4/.config: No such file or directory
> Makefile:38: WARNING: No kernel PCMCIA support found and PCMCIA_PATH is not defined
> Makefile:45: WARNING: Linux wireless extensions, CONFIG_NET_RADIO, not enabled in the kernel
> make: *** No rule to make target `/usr/src/linux-2.4/.config'.  Stop.

You have some stuff missing, but that's not serious because you can
easily get it.

> I am fairly new to linux and very new to installing w/ make.

You didn't need to tell us that... :)

The first error line (no such file as /usr/src/linux-2.4/.config) is
telling us that either you lied about your KERNEL_PATH or you didn't
build your kernel there because you haven't got a .config there and
the first thing you have to do to build a kernel is make a .config.

In any case /usr/src/ is a bad place to build kernels.  I prefer to
put my kernel sources in /home/ged/src and build them there.

So all you need to do is grab some kernel sources, install them
somewhere safe and configure them (which will create a .config) then
follow the instructions for HostAP - which you seem to be doing pretty
much right already.  Don't forget to point the KERNEL_PATH variable to
your new source.  If you're very new to Linux you'll need to know that
the Linux 'ls' command hides files which have names that begin with a
dot unless you do something to tell it not to.  Read the man page,

man ls

and read the Kernel README and other docs.  You will end up knowing a
lot more about it all than you do now.  Use 'make menuconfig' when you
configure the kernel, don't use 'make config', that's a pain.  There's
also 'make xconfig' which gives me the heebygeebies but you might get
on with it OK if you run X.

Build everything as an unprivileged user, only do things like
'make install' (and for example 'make install_pci' - anything that has
to mess with the system) as root. 

73,
Ged.