building jaunty using git

Day 1:

Yesterday, I re-visited the task of building the kernel for ubuntu-jaunty. Obtaining the source using git is covered here. Compiling the source is covered here.

Snag1:
I was on Hardy (not Intrepid) and Hardy repositories do not have a needed utility makedumpfile. After a few hours of compiling, the build failed as it couldn't find makedumpfile. You can save yourself the trouble and manually install the package from here. Once you download the makedumpfile package, you can install it like so:

dpkg -i /path/to/file/makedumpfile_1.2.9-0ubuntu3_i386.deb

So I'm now starting a build again, but this time, to save some time, I will build just the generic flavor, like so:

AUTOBUILD=1 NOEXTRAS=1 fakeroot debian/rules binary-generic

I'm also removing the source directory and cloning the repository fresh. This is to
make sure that there are no conflicts with any files left over from the previous
build.

Day 2:
So today I got the build to go all the way. It generated two debs - the linux image
and headers respectively. I installed the image like so:

dpkg -i linux-image-2.6.28-4-generic_2.6.28-4.5_i386.deb

Since I had modified the /boot/grub/menu.1st file, this gave me the option of overwriting
it or keeping the old. I kept the old file as there were entries to all my
kernel versions I wanted to keep. Later I manually added the stanza
for the new kernel to /boot/grub/menu.1st like so:

title Ubuntu 8.04.1, git kernel 2.6.28-4-generic
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.28-4-generic root=UUID=b79346d4-7799-43ae-a033-99d70b6784be ro quiet splash
initrd /initrd.img-2.6.28-4-generic
quiet

Snag 2:
Then I tried installing the headers like so:

dpkg -i linux-headers-2.6.28-4-generic_2.6.28-4.5_i386.deb

But this failed as there was a dependency on linux-headers-2.6.28-4 which was not
present on the system. I found it here. I installed it like so:

dpkg -i linux-headers-2.6.28-4_2.6.28-4.5_all.deb

After that, I could successfully install the headers.

After which, I could reboot into the new kernel.

Wireless:

However my wireless connection did not work. Looking at the dmesg output I found these:

thushara@gini-sisila:~$ dmesg | grep acx
[ 12.782440] acx: Loaded combined PCI/USB driver, firmware_ver=default
[ 12.782450] acx: compiled to use 32bit I/O access. I/O timing issues might occur, such as non-working firmware upload. Report them
[ 12.782532] acx_pci 0000:00:0b.0: PCI INT A -> Link[LNKD] -> GSI 10 (level, low) -> IRQ 10
[ 12.782758] acx: found ACX111-based wireless network card at 0000:00:0b.0, irq:10, phymem1:0xE2020000, phymem2:0xE2000000, mem1:0xe0edc000, mem1_size:8192, mem2:0xe08c0000, mem2_size:131072
[ 12.783790] acx: loading firmware for acx1111 chipset with radio ID 16
[ 12.783801] acx_pci 0000:00:0b.0: firmware: requesting acx/1.2.1.34/tiacx111c16
[ 20.290162] acx: firmware image 'acx/1.2.1.34/tiacx111c16' was not provided. Check your hotplug scripts
[ 20.290177] acx_pci 0000:00:0b.0: firmware: requesting acx/1.2.1.34/tiacx111
[ 20.772774] acx: firmware image 'acx/1.2.1.34/tiacx111' was not provided. Check your hotplug scripts
[ 20.772786] acx: reset_dev() FAILED
[ 20.772840] acx_pci 0000:00:0b.0: PCI INT A disabled
[ 20.788119] acx_pci: probe of 0000:00:0b.0 failed with error -5
[ 20.788361] usbcore: registered new interface driver acx_usb

So it looked like the firmware files were missing. Doing a quick `locate tiacx` listed
that the firmware files were available on my previous kernel lib path but not on
the current kernel firmware path.

So I created the firmware directory for the acx driver under the directory for
the new kernel and copied just the single file mentioned by the dmesg to that
location, like so:

sudo cp /lib/firmware/2.6.24-19-generic/acx/1.2.1.34/tiacx111c16 /lib/firmware/`uname -r`/acx/1.2.1.34

After this, I could reboot into the new kernel and the wireless worked.