Fedora Core 1 Experience

It is March of 2004. I found Fedora core 1 with a magazine. I wanted to install it on my computer. So, I pulled up my socks for those usual Linux installation hasseles which I had always been experiencing.
Installation

I started the installation with a chanting of "JAI MATA KI!". But my god! It was a breaze. everything including my Intel 845 display card, LG Studioworks monitor and AC97 audio was automatically detected and configured.
PCTEL HSP56 Micromodem

Now came the configuration part. Everything except my PCTEL HSP56 Micromodem was detected and configured. I decided to search for the latest driver available, because I had a problem with the driver I was using with RedHat 8.0. You can see my problem here.

I did find a new version of the driver on linmodems.org. The exact URL was:

http://linmodems.technion.ac.il/pctel-linux/pctel-0.9.7-9.tar.gz

I was delighted to see that it calimed to solve the AC97 problem. Now I started to install the driver. It had a setup script for this. But when I ran that script, it gave a problem:

checking for running kernel version...2.4.22
checking for ptserial...ptserial-2.4.7.c
checking for gcc...3.3.2
searching for kernel includes...found at /usr/src/linux/include
checking for modversions.h.../usr/src/linux/include/linux/modversions.h
checking for kernel_version...UTS_RELEASE is 2.4.22-1.2115.nptl
detecting your modem...found. Your modem is a pct789 type modem.
** compilation error
please read the FAQ about reporting compilation problems
and report this problem.

That means no supplying of the kernel sources path, no supplying of the the HAL. The setup script can detect that itself. But it failed to compile. It did not give the nature of error in compiling. So I decided to compile it manually. I gave the following commands:

# cd src

# ./configure

This asked me for the manual configuration or automatic. I selected the automatic configuration as I had already seen that it was able to detect my modem correctly. It configured the makefile correctly. Now came the real compilation part. I gave the following command:

# make

gcc -Werror -Wno-trigraphs -fno-common -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer -fno-strict-aliasing -pipe -fno-strength-reduce -DVERSION=\"0.9.7-9\" -DGCC_VERSION=\"3.3.2\" -DMODULE -DMODVERSIONS -DEXPORT_SYMTAB -DBUILD_SYSTEM=\""`uname -s -m -r -p`\"" -D__KERNEL__ -I/usr/src/linux-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl/include/ -DHAL_PCT789 -include /usr/src/linux-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl/include//linux/modversions.h -o ptserial.o -c ptserial-2.4.7.c
ptserial-2.4.7.c: In function `rs_close':
ptserial-2.4.7.c:2815: error: invalid operands to binary ==
make: *** [ptserial.o] Error 1

It was clear that the sources supplied with the driver were not compatible with driver ware not compatible with the kernel sources. Kernel 2.4.22 to be precise.Again it was the time to go the best place for the troubleshooting. The INTERNET. After much of the searching on various serach engines, I found the soultion to this problem at a place.

The actual problem is that in the updated kernel, the data structures defined in tty.h have undergone some small changes. In particular, tty->count which is of type atomic_t, is no longer an integer as the code assumes. The solution to this problem is that the term tty->count on the line 2815 of ptserial.2.4.7.c is to be replaced with tty->count->counter. This solves the problem. I did this and hurrah! it worked! If anyone else wants to setup the driver on fedora core 1, I have uploaded the driver on my geocities website.

http://www.geocities.com/vyakti2003

Now I am able to surf the Internet without any problem and now that "ISP related" problem is also not there.