[tulip-bug] RPM installation probs

[Donald Becker]

On Fri, 25 Aug 2000, Pete Tucker wrote:

> I'm trying to install netdriver-2.0-src.rpm on RedHat 5.2 using the
> command sequence given on the web page
> (http://www.scyld.com/network/updates.html). When I try "rpm -bb
> SPECS/netdriver.spec", I get a message to run "depmod -a". There are
> warnings during the compile something like: "natsemi: implicit declaration
> 'be16_to_cpu'", and "natsemi: implicit declaration 'cpu_to_be16'". depmod
> -a runs successfully, but when I try to run "rpm -i --force
> RPMS/i386/netdriver-2.0-*.i386.rpm", I get "starfire.o: unresolved
> symbols" and "natsemi.o: unresolved symbols".

Doh!  I didn't try out the updated natsemi.c driver with the old kernels.

The next version will fix the problem.

The problem is that the NatSemi chip has confused endianess.  PCI is a
little-endian bus, and almost all PCI chips have little-endian registers.
Some designer at NatSemi has a barely-concealed big-endian bias, and put some
big-endian registers into the chip.  I used endian conversion macros to
correct, but the endian conversion macros are not defined prior to 2.2.*.
The kern_compat.h file only supports little-endian conversion with older
kernels.

Donald Becker				becker@scyld.com
Scyld Computing Corporation		http://www.scyld.com
410 Severn Ave. Suite 210		Beowulf-II Cluster Distribution
Annapolis MD 21403