ETES GmbH — EDV-Systemhaus

Note: This article is a republishing from our old webpage.

Sometimes it happens that SuSE Linux is distributed with a bug in one of the kernel modules which you need for your installation. An example for this is the kernel module aacraid for SuSE 9.2. This documentation explains how to replace a kernel module for the installation. It works only for modules which can be loaded manually.

A long time ago SuSE was shipped this some floppy disks which keep the kernel modules. Today you will only get a set of some CDs and DVDs to install. This makes the process some more complicated.

1. The first of all is to find out which kernel module might be affected. There are no real steps for that. In our case we found in formations about a bug in the aacraid kernel module.
2. Find a kernel patch for the known bug or write your own fix. ;-)
3. Install a minimum system with some additional packets (gcc, make, patch) and the kernel sources on a different machine. A good choice for this is a virtual machine like VMware or xen. Don't run onlineupdates after the installation!
4. Change to the directory of your kernel sources and run a make cloneconfig.
5. Apply the kernel patch to the buggy module.
6. Compile the module with a make modules in your kernel source directory.
7. You will find a file kernel_module_name.ko in your source tree. Copy it on a Linux machine which has a floppy drive.
8. Start the installation on the target machine using CD number 2 and choose a manual installation. Follow the installation instructions until you reach the point where you can load kernel modules.
9. Select the needed module category. Yast will ask you to insert a special module disk with a special number.
10. On the CD 1 of SuSE you will find this floppy disk as an image. Copy the image to the disk using dd like it is explained in the SUSE documentation.
11. Mount the floppy on the machine to which you have copied the kernel module file create in the first steps.
12. You will find two files on the floppy disk. One is named module.config and the other one has a special name like scsi-modules. Copy the second file to your hard disk.
13. Append the ending .gz (like scsi-modules.gz) and uncompress it with gzip.
14. The result will be a Mimix file system image which you can mount. Create a new mount point (let's call it /mnt/mimix) and mount the file: mount -o loop /file/to/image /mnt/mimix
15. Change to your new mount point and replace the buggy kernel module with the one created by you.
16. Unmount the image file, compress it using gzip and copy it back to the floppy disk.
17. After unmounting the floppy disk you can use it for your installation process. Insert the disk and select your new module.
18. That's all. Just complete your installation.

Thanks to Harald and Hendrik for their support!