FSCK! LFS/lilo hosed my system (attn Ralinx)

[Feztaa]

I don't know WTF happened. I ran LILO on my LFS system, and it didn't give any errors. Now when I reboot, booting to LFS works, but my NICs are not recognised (I compiled the two modules for my two NICs straight into the kernel, and 'ifconfig -a' only shows lo, no eth0 or eth1, they simply don't exist.

Also, I can't even boot into debian, I get a kernel panic!!

What do I do now?? I can boot into LFS, so I might be able to save Debian, but I'm not sure what I can do! The last thing I want to do is reinstall Debian just to reinstall LFS!

(BTW, I had to boot to :'( Windows :'( to even got online at all... :'( :'( :'()

[Feztaa]

Ok, I've tested this pretty extensively now. Here are the symtoms I am getting:

My NICs, eth0 and eth1, do not exist at all (ifconfig -a does not show them), even when the appropriate modules are compiled straight into the kernel (ie, not modules).

And I can reproduce these symptoms by booting any kernel compiled on LFS (any kernel that isn't the one I initially compiled in the LFS book, on my debian system).

Can anybody tell me what I'm doing wrong? (I also posted this to lfs-support, though that email was probably a little less clear).

[ph34r]

Does ifconfig eth0 show anything at all? It should at least show you the MAC address, which means that the card is there and supported, and just needs configuring...

Been a LONG time since I did LFS - Slack is just as good, and takes way less compile time

make sure ur NIC's are set up in the bootscripts, just having the modules inside of the kernel won't be enough, u'll always have to initialise them when u boot the system. so maybe u just screwed up ur bootscripts or something

about the debian kernel thing: i don't know what could be causing this, perhaps it's some sort of indication that using debian is a bad idea

[Feztaa]

make sure ur NIC's are set up in the bootscripts, just having the modules inside of the kernel won't be enough, u'll always have to initialise them when u boot the system. *so maybe u just screwed up ur bootscripts or something

No, that's not it. The one kernel that does work, and the multitudes of kernels that didn't work all used the same bootscripts.

It's working now, with this one kernel, but the problem is this kernel doesn't have sound support in it, so I need to recompile, but none of the recompiled kernels see my NICs (literally: 'ifconfig -a' shows only the lo interface), even when the kernels have the modules compiled in.

It's not that the bootscript isn't working, it's that the kernel denies all existence of the NICs.

about the debian kernel thing: i don't know what could be causing this, perhaps it's some sort of indication that using debian is a bad idea

Likely that's just because the Debian kernel uses initrd, and the lfs kernel doesn't. I had to disable initrd in my lilo.conf to get lfs's lilo to update the MBR. So now the debian kernel is getting kernel panics because it needs the initrd thing. Though, if I specify initrd, lilo won't like it and won't update the MBR, so debian is pretty much gone for now. I may have to reinstall...

[Feztaa]

Ok, I've got debian bootable again. The problem was in fact that there was no initrd which was screwing it up. The problem I had with enabling initrd in LFS with lilo was that, for some reason, the initrd file that debian's lilo was using had a space (or some other Non Printing Character) at the end of the file name, so when I tried to tell lilo to use the "initrd" file as the initrd, it wouldn't work because the real file name was something like "initrd ". I just renamed the bloody file and now it works.

That's all beside the bloody point, though! None of the kernels I try to compile for LFS work? wtf is up? :'( :'(

None of the kernels I try to compile for LFS work? wtf is up? :'( :'(

have u ever succesfully compiled ur own kernel (not including updating the kernel in debian)? are u even sure that ur compiling the right modules into ur kernel?

[Feztaa]

have u ever succesfully compiled ur own kernel (not including updating the kernel in debian)?

Yes, I have once successfully compiled a kernel. The one I compiled (on Debian) while finishing up the LFS book (end of chapter 8) works perfectly, and it has the modules compiled into the kernel.

The problem is now solved, though. I don't know why, but compiling the modules straight into the kernel doesn't work when compiling on LFS, so what I had to do was compile the NIC modules as modules, then load the modules seperately, and now it works.

Thanks for the help, but I got it sorted. I can now compile my own kernels without trouble.

About your NIC's:
1. Did you compile them directly in your kernel or as modules? If they are modules, do you load these modules?

2. Do you, in your bootscripts or something, assign an address to your NIC's? If you do not, it's sure that ifconfig won't show them.

compiling the modules straight into the kernel doesn't work when compiling on LFS

it should work cuz that's how i always do it and it's always worked