[SOLVED] Cross compile driver for OMV (on different Linux)

Hallo!

First of all I have to thank Volker for OMV and his great work. I'm really happy with it!

Unfortunately the current kernel used for OMV uses an ethernet driver for the RTL8111, which very often looses it's link under high load on 1000MBit and makes OMV unreliable/inoperable for me. So I have to use the ethernet driver from Realtek, which I have to compile first. Despite this I want to compile some other sourcecode for OMV.

As I don't want to install gcc and compile the stuff on my OMV-PC (it's very slow) I have to "cross compile" everything on my laptop. As I'm using Debian 12.04.1 on it, I fear that many things will be incompatible and the compiled files will not work (different libc, gcc and kernel). So my question is, if anyone has more experience in that and explain the easiest way to get a working compiled file.

In the embedded world, one can download a cross compile toolchain and it's done. How is it done in this case?

I guess there are three possible solutions

1. I downgrade my laptop to the exact version OMV is using (which I don't prefer)
2. I use my current debian version and download the packages OMV is using and cross compile
3. There is no problem and I only have some strange thoughts

Any other solutions? Can somebody help me?

Thanks for your help!

Best regards,
Sven

Sorry, you are right of course, I meant Ubuntu.

Your solution is possible, but I don't prefer it. Imagine I use four or five different boxes running linux (i.e. Dreambox, OMV, Popcorn etc.) and for every box I have to install and maintain a different linux version running in a virtual box. I prefer to only have one linux box which I have to configure and maintain. From this machine I want to be able to compile for all different linux boxes. Please don't get me wrong, I'm just asking if this is easily possible!

If the effort for this is higher than the effort to maintain five different virtual boxes, this makes no sense of course...

I just tried to execute an elf-file on OMV which was compiled on Ubuntu 12.04.1. It seems to be working! So the differences seem to be limited.

Now I have to get the kernel 2.6.32 module working...

It's pretty early now, but I got it working without any hard problems:

- downloaded Debian Squeeze kernel
- copied the kernel config from OMV (/boot/)
- compiled the 2.6.32 kernel+modules on my Ubuntu VMware
- installed modules
- adapted the Realtek scripts to work with a kernel, which is not the running kernel
- compiled the driver
- rmmod r8169 and insmod r8168
- update modprobe stuff
- update init-ramfs
- reboot

The driver is accepted by the OMV machine kernel and the ethernet link seems to be not crashing anymore. Perhaps it's a little bit slower, but better slower than crashing. Link speed is set to correct 1000Mbit.

Yeeeha!

It seems that I cheered too soon:

The driver r8168-8.032.00 is more instable than before. It's slow and crashes network connection now, even when there is no heavy traffic, thus looses the network link sporadically. And no "eth0: link down" kernel message reported... :-((

Well, at least I got it compiled

Well, good point! I thought OMV is currently not working with kernel 3.2 ! Is OMV compatible?
How can I upgrade? Via apt-get upgrade etc.? Which package/server do I have to take in apt-get?

Thanks for your reply!

OK, I updated to kernel 3.2 . Let's wait, if it's more stable!

Now the graphics card driver selects a console screenmode, which is not compatible to my TFT :twisted:. Not easy to change, but if the network driver is stable, I don't need a display...

Thanks and best regards