[ltp] PNPBIOS oops at bootup

[Tino Keitel]

On Mon, May 05, 2003 at 15:01:18 -0700, Ken Restivo wrote:
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> I pulled out Thomas Hood's pnpbios patch from the 2.4.18-ac3 kernel
> patch, creating my own little "pnpbios-only" patch. It applied and
> built: so far so good.
> 
> Of course the simplest possible case (pnpbios-only patch) oopses at
> bootup :-(. I'm now tracking down a ksymoops to find out why.
> 
> Before I chase this rabbit too long:
> 
> 	1) Is there, anywhere, a clean, normal, non-ac, pnpbios-only
> 	patch somewhere? I've got kernel 2.4.18 with the stock Woody
> 	patches, and that's what I want to stick with for the time
> 	being. So any working pnpbios patch against a stock 2.4.18
> 	and/or Woody kernel would be great.
> 
> 	2) Is there anything in the -ac patches that pnpbios is known
> 	to depend on? I looked at the code, it seems straightforward
> 	and pretty self-contained. But then, mucking about in BIOS
> 	registers, anything can happen. I notice that it loads VERY
> 	early in the boot process too: i think it was the third or
> 	fourth driver to load.
> 
> Alan Cox is quite a clever fellow, but I really don't want all the
> rest of the stuff in -ac patches. I run Debian anyway, not RedHat.
> And I don't want to enter the nightmare world of conflicting patches
> stomping on each other, which have nothing to do with what I want:
> pnpbios only.
> 
> My apologies if what I'm trying to do is difficult, impossible, or
> simply fetishistic. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Another way to get /proc/bus/pnp with a vanilla kernel is not to use
kernel pcmcia drivers, but the pcmcia drivers from the pcmcia-cs
package. For the Debian package, you have to install pcmcia-source and
add the --pnp option to the calls to ./Configure in
/usr/src/modules/pcmcia-cs/debian/rules. You will get a pcmcia socket
driver that provides /proc/bus/pnp.

Regards,
Tino

-- 
tino.keitel@innominate.com
dipl.-inf.                        Innominate Security Technologies AG
software engineer                                   enabling security
tel: +49.30.6392-3308                      http://www.innominate.com/