Kenneth's Custom Kernel With PWC 10.0.7 and Velleman K8000 on Fedora Core 4

How to install pwc in Fedora core 4 AND get Velleman K8000 working.

Velleman requires a kernel module which is not enabled per default in the Fedora kernels.

PWC 10.0.6a and 10.0.7a will not build on stock kernel 2.6.12

Kernel 2.6.11.11 sources fail to build with gcc 4.0.

Solution is to rebuild Fedora FC4 kernel sources.

Download source RPM

http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/4/i386/os/SRPMS/kernel-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4.src.rpm

And save them anywhere (in your home dir for example)

Create source tree

Now we need to get from RPM to kernel source tree and located at the good old /usr/src tree.

rpm -Uvh kernel-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4.src.rpm

This writes the RPM contents into /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES and /usr/src/redhat/SPECS.

Prepare the kernel sources using the commands:

cd /usr/src/redhat/SPECS
rpmbuild -bp --target $(arch) kernel-2.6.11.spec

Move source tree to /usr/src

Now we move it to the /usr/src tree and make a link called linux pointing to it

cd /usr/src/redhat/BUILD/kernel-2.6.11
mv linux-2.6.11 /usr/src/
cd /usr/src
ln -s ./linux-2.6.11 linux
cd /usr/src/linux

Get right config file

Next step is to get the right config file.

The .config which is already there is for i686 standard single CPU. If you need something else copy the desired config file from the /usr/src/linux/configs directory. I needed the smp version.

cp configs/kernel-2.6.11-i686-smp.config .config

Configure Kernel

Start up your kernel configurator

make menuconfig (text mode for text terminal access)

For activating the modules needed for Velleman K8000 navigate to

Device Drivers -> I2C Support -> I2C Hardware Bus Support and activate Parallel Port Adapter and Parallel Port Adapter (light)

The one that is known to work with kernel 2.6.10 is Parallel Port Adapter (i2c-parport module). Activate both as Module so that you can choose one or the other.

Finally save and exit

Build Kernel

Now we build the kernel the standard way.

I forgot to edit the version in the makefile so mine ended up as 2.6.11-prep. So I use this in the path names from now on

make bzImage
make modules
make modules_install - This can take an hour!
make install

Save the configure file

It is nice to keep the config we used for some other time.

cp /usr/src/linux/.config /boot/config-2.6.11-prep

Edit the Grub config file

Edit /boot/grub/grub.conf

To activate the new kernel as default set default=0.

Now reboot.

PWC

The pwc part. I installed pwc-10.0.7a

Get rid of old driver

First we need to get rid of the old 9.2 version. Delete the directory and the file in it.

rm -R /lib/modules/2.6.11-prep/kernel/drivers/usb/media/pwc

Unload the old module if it is already there. rmmod pwc

Prepare the source directory for PWC

Copy the pwc-10.0.7a.tar.gz to any place. Untar it

tar zxvf pwc-10.0.7a.tar.gz

Build Driver

Enter the directory and build and install the new driver.

cd pwc-10.0.7a
make
make install

Load Module

All you need to do now is load the module.

modprobe pwc

Velleman

Velleman requires a little bit more.

Setup udev for the velleman device

Go to this directory

cd /etc/udev/rules.d

create a new text file called 05-local.rules I use nano (I hate vi).

nano 05-local.rules

Make just this one line.

KERNEL=="i2c-4",                 SYMLINK="velleman", MODE="0666"

Save it cntl-O and quit cntl-X

Make video devices accessible to normal users.

If you also want the video devices to be world accessible The video devices keep on getting rw only for root.

Edit this file.

/etc/security/console.perms.d/50-default.perms

Change this line

<console>  0600 <v4l>        0600 root

to this

<console>  0666 <v4l>        0666 root

And save the file.

In the /etc/udev/rules.d/05-local.rules file I also have this line.

KERNEL=="video*",               MODE="0666"

Load Velleman driver

I am not sure about pwc but at least the Velleman driver needs a little help to get loaded.

In /etc/rc.d/rc.local I have

# Load i2c driver modules for velleman
modprobe i2c-parport type=2
modprobe i2c-dev

Reboot and hope for the best

Velleman Library - libk8000

The library you need is libk8000. You can find it both as sources and RPM here

http://struyve.mine.nu:8080/index.php?block=k8000

The rpm is not very new but it loads fine on Fedora Core 4. Install it with

rpm -ivh libk8000-2.1.2-1.i386.rpm

-- KennethLavrsen - 24 Jun 2005