trying to install a module

[Brian Kelsay]

Brian Kelsay wrote:

> I'm trying to build a module to install on a freshly loaded RedHat 9 
> system.  The video for linux (v4l2) has to be built first and then the 
> BrookTree (bttv) module must be built for using a video capture card. 
> Anyway, when I try to run a make on the modules source I get an error 
> and a message that my kernel is not enabled for modules.  That is BS, 
> because I can run lsmod and see the currently loaded modules and rmmod 
> and remove a module that I'm not going to need.  So what's up?
> 
> At the v4l site (http://bytesex.org/v4l/build.html) I see this message:
> 
> If you run in trouble with the distribution kernel, try a vanilla kernel 
> from kernel.org instead. The RH9 kernel for example doesn't work without 
> some tweaks in the drivers source code because they backported lot of 
> stuff from 2.5.x and broke source level compatibility with vanilla 2.4.x 
> kernels.
> 
> To me this just doesn't sound right.  Is it possible that RedHat was 
> trying to gain some functionality in the 2.5 kernel and that is what 
> broke it for this module?  I guess I don't really understand what I'm 
> reading.
> 
> Brian

Well oddly enough something I did made it work, but I'm not sure what. 
Like I said I downloaded the bttv and v4l2 sources and unpacked them in 
the /usr/src/ directory /usr/src/bttv and /usr/src/v4l2 respectively and 
neither would finish make w/out an error.  I insured that loadable 
modules and v4l and bttv support were enabled in the kernel, but they 
wouldn't work.  While I searched for the kernel compile docs to look 
stuff up (I didn't trust my memory) I went ahead and typed in the 
commands I remembered while in the /usr/src/linux-2.4.20-18.9 directory.
make old config
make deps
make modules
make modules install
make clean
And then I was goofing around and reading some other stuff and getting 
thoroughly confused.  I thought I better check what kernel was starting 
at boot time and I decided to just watch the reboot.  Sure enough the 
2.4.20-18.9 kernel was loading.  I ran lsmod after the boot and lo and 
behold the bttv module was running and so was the video-dev, i2c-core, 
i3c-algo-bit, tvaudio, tuner, and soundcore lists bttv.  I even have the 
radeon module in there, but it may have been there before.

On to the next task!!
Does anybody think I need the glx and dri modules running if I am just 
running tv capture on this box?
Brian