Next goal

[prcoder]

Hi Goran !
Marry Cristmas and Happy New Year ! :-)
What news and what our next goal today ?

[Goran Devic]

Thank you, wishing you the same!

Well, this is the beauty with such project - you can pick and chose
whatever inspires you, and when you feel like it :)

We left off figuring out (in fact, Carlos did) the existing 2.6
structure works until the kernel version 2.6.9, after which they
changed things sufficiently, and they actually removed some device
functions, so we need to find other ways to communicate with the
kernel device. Carlos is leading in that direction, you may want to
sync up with him on that.

Carlos checked in the formal source trees to sourceforge.net, one for
2.4, the other for 2.6
We really need to make TOT 2.6 compile, load and work, that has been
the majority of requests that I received. There are many challenges
such are compile options of distro kernels that mess things up,
changes in the kernel interface, etc. In spite of those, we need to
make sure Linice loads without need to recompile kernel, finding all
the hooks on the fly. That is its main strength among few kernel
debuggers out there.

I made few fixes that I did not check in yet; still, I need to get set
up to use sourceforge, if you figure out a simple way (steps to-do) it
would be great if you can post it. I got all wrapped up in reading
their documentation about CVS and did not get far with actually
setting it up for myself.

One very useful thing would be to actually start using Linice :) with
some formal modules of significant size, or the kernel itself. I
believe there should be a number of small problems cropping up. I
really did not receive many bug reports, which either means people are
using it and it does not show obvious bugs, or three of us are the
only ones using it :) If you'd like to kick it in that direction, you
can always use existing 2.4 build, or 2.6 before 2.6.9.

Another thing would be to install another distro and check whether it
works on it.

Gosh, we need to jot down these items somewhere formally :)

Later,
- Goran

[Carlos Manuel Duclos Vergara]

Hi,

>
> We left off figuring out (in fact, Carlos did) the existing 2.6
> structure works until the kernel version 2.6.9, after which they
> changed things sufficiently, and they actually removed some device
> functions, so we need to find other ways to communicate with the
> kernel device. Carlos is leading in that direction, you may want to
> sync up with him on that.
>

what I think that could be benefical for all of us is setting some kind of
TODO list. Maybe having a simple TODO file in the cvs repository will be
enough?

> We really need to make TOT 2.6 compile, load and work, that has been
> the majority of requests that I received. There are many challenges
> such are compile options of distro kernels that mess things up,

this things are solved if we use the new compilation schema, however by using
this schema we have to rewrite a big part of linice

> changes in the kernel interface, etc. In spite of those, we need to
> make sure Linice loads without need to recompile kernel, finding all
> the hooks on the fly. That is its main strength among few kernel
> debuggers out there.
>

anybody has experience writing ioctl call handlers? if there is nobody with
experience I need a volunteer to teach him how to write ioctl handlers.
Unfortunately I'm a little time-constrained these days, so if anybody wants
to learn that just email me to start implementing the external symbol loader.

> I made few fixes that I did not check in yet; still, I need to get set
> up to use sourceforge, if you figure out a simple way (steps to-do) it
> would be great if you can post it. I got all wrapped up in reading
> their documentation about CVS and did not get far with actually
> setting it up for myself.
>

I will put a document to use linice from sourceforge. However, everybody who
wants to have write access to the repository will need authorization from
Goran (read only access is allowed to everybody)

Cheers!

--
Carlos Manuel Duclos Vergara
car...@embedded.cl
http://www.embedded.cl

[prcoder]

Ok, it's a good news :-)
I have tried to make my first patch. I suggest to replace:

-make -C /usr/src/linux SUBDIRS=$PWD modules
+make -C /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/build SUBDIRS=$PWD modules

in linice-2.6/bin-2.6/compile_2.6

That it was possible to compile without source codes of a kernel in
/usr/src.

[Carlos Manuel Duclos Vergara]

Hi,

> Ok, it's a good news :-)
> I have tried to make my first patch. I suggest to replace:
>
> -make -C /usr/src/linux SUBDIRS=$PWD modules
> +make -C /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/build SUBDIRS=$PWD modules
>
> in linice-2.6/bin-2.6/compile_2.6
>

I don't mean to be rude, but applying that patch is not a good thing because
after kernel 2.6.8 this won't work. The compilation schema has changed from
2.4 to 2.6, so compiling everything as usual is not enough.

Please take a look at
http://www.elbazaar.cl/~carlos/modulo_basico-20050105.tar.gz
for a complete example and http://lwn.net/Articles/driver-porting/
for the theorical explanation of how things changed.
I don't know if Goran (he's the owner, his word is the law) agrees with me,
but my opinion is not to introduce changes that will only fix the symptom not
the disease.

Cheers!

--
Carlos Manuel Duclos Vergara
car...@embedded.cl

http://www.elbazaar.cl/

[Goran Devic]

Hi,
IMHO, every change that is a step forward is welcomed. Complete
implementation for TOT 2.6.9 and above is not yet ready and doesn't
work anyways. We do have users with 2.6.8 that could benefit from it
in the meantime until we fix it properly. It's a small change and if
it helps few 2.6.8 users, let it be.
Now, let's focus on 2.6.9, it has been a moving target for quite long... :)
thanks,
- Goran

[prcoder]

I have kernel 2.6.10-1.737asp now.

[root@tpchome bin-2.6]# ./compile_2.6
make: Entering directory `/lib/modules/2.6.10-1.737asp/build'
CC [M] /root/linice/linice-2.6-devel/bin-2.6/iceface.o
LD [M] /root/linice/linice-2.6-devel/bin-2.6/linice.o
Building modules, stage 2.
MODPOST
Warning: could not find
/root/linice/linice-2.6-devel/bin-2.6/.linice_kernel.o_shipped.cmd for
/root/linice/linice-2.6-devel/bin-2.6/linice_kernel.o_shipped
CC /root/linice/linice-2.6-devel/bin-2.6/linice.mod.o
LD [M] /root/linice/linice-2.6-devel/bin-2.6/linice.ko
make: Leaving directory `/lib/modules/2.6.10-1.737asp/build'
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Creating linice_2.6.10-1.737asp and copying kernel-dependent module...
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Done. You may now run "linsym -i" to install the linice module.

Do you talk about this ?
>Warning: could not find
/root/linice/linice-2.6-devel/bin-2.6/.linice_kernel.o_shipped.cmd >for
/root/linice/linice-2.6-devel/bin-2.6/linice_kernel.o_shipped

I think we should get rid completely of the scheme of compilation with
_shipped as I wrote earlier.
All we need for this two .S sources :-)