I can't get Nistnet to work - Please help

I have now tried installing Nistnet on Fedora Core 4 kernel 2.6.12,
Red Hat 9 kernel 2.4.18, Red Hat 7.2 Kernel 2.4.20-8, and Red Hat 7.2
kernel 2.4.7-10... every single time, Nistnet gives me the following
error:

rmmod: module rtc is not loaded
Couldn't find rtc module - /dev/rtc will be mostly
unusable after running nistnet. Sorry about that....
To prevent this message, recompile rtc
(Enhanced Real Time Clock Support, under
character devices) as a module.


In each case (4 kernels now!) here is what I do:

Install linux
log in as root
cd /usr/src
ln -s /usr/src/linux-[version] /usr/src/linux (where [version] is
2.4.18, or 2.4.7, etc)
cd /usr/src/linux
make menuconfig (I configure Character Devices > Enhanced Real Time
Clock Support as a Module, and Loadable module Support > Module
versioning support I remove the *)
make
make modules
make install
make modules_install
reboot

log in as root
cd /home
tar -zxvf nistnet-2.012b.tar.gz (or version c for 2.6 kernels)
cd nistnet
../configure
make
make install
../Load-Nistnet

and at this point, I get the RTC error.

Can someone please tell me what I am doing wrong? If you have an
answer, please try and be specific as possible. Thanks for your help.

Al

Al wrote:
> I have now tried installing Nistnet on Fedora Core 4 kernel 2.6.12,
> Red Hat 9 kernel 2.4.18, Red Hat 7.2 Kernel 2.4.20-8, and Red Hat 7.2
> kernel 2.4.7-10... every single time, Nistnet gives me the following
> error:
>
> rmmod: module rtc is not loaded
> Couldn't find rtc module - /dev/rtc will be mostly
> unusable after running nistnet. Sorry about that....
> To prevent this message, recompile rtc
> (Enhanced Real Time Clock Support, under
> character devices) as a module.
>
>
> In each case (4 kernels now!) here is what I do:
>
> Install linux
> log in as root
> cd /usr/src
> ln -s /usr/src/linux-[version] /usr/src/linux (where [version] is
> 2.4.18, or 2.4.7, etc)
> cd /usr/src/linux
> make menuconfig (I configure Character Devices > Enhanced Real Time
> Clock Support as a Module, and Loadable module Support > Module
> versioning support I remove the *)
> make
> make modules
> make install
> make modules_install
> reboot
>
> log in as root
> cd /home
> tar -zxvf nistnet-2.012b.tar.gz (or version c for 2.6 kernels)
> cd nistnet
> ./configure
> make
> make install
> ./Load-Nistnet
>
> and at this point, I get the RTC error.
>
> Can someone please tell me what I am doing wrong? If you have an
> answer, please try and be specific as possible. Thanks for your help.

In your shoes I'd start by getting Nistnet running on a 2.4 series
kernel. It may work with 2.6, but I don't know well.

Nistnet should still work even without RTC being a module.
Nevertheless, you are probably better off rebuilding it as a module.

There are several places that things could have gone wrong: your
attempts to make RTC a module could have failed or you could be running
the wrong kernel. Things you should check:
1) Did the RTC module compile?
cd /usr/src/linux-xxxxx
find . -name rtc.o -print
Expected response:
./drivers/char/rtc.o
If you don't get this, it didn't compile. Try
grep RTC .config
Expected response
CONFIG_RTC=m
(you will see other stuff, but this is the one that matters).
If this is correct, try
make clean ; make oldconfig ; make ; make modules
and maybe the module will compile.
If you don't see the correct line for RTC in the .config file, you're
going to have to fix it. (Personally I'd use "make xconfig" instead of
menuconfig.)

2) If the RTC module compiled, did it install?
find /lib/modules -name rtc.o -print
Expected response:
/lib/modules/VVVVV/kernel/drivers/char/rtc.o
where VVVVV is your kernel version. If it's not there, then make
modules_install messed up. This seems unlikely, but you will need the
output of "find" in the next step.

3) Are you running the right kernel?
uname -r
Expected response:
VVVVV
where VVVVV matches the version name in the pathname of the RTC module.
If you aren't running the right kernel, you will need to add it to the
boot loader configuration file and reboot.

A tip: I *always* edit the Makefile in the root of the kernel source
and change the value of EXTRAVERSION before I do anything else. That
way I know I am not going to wipe out an existing kernel and render my
machine unbootable. Doing this also means that "uname -r" gives you
instant feedback that you have booted the wrong kernel.

4) Is the RTC module installed?
lsmod | grep rtc
Expected response: Something like
rtc 7644 0 (autoclean)
If the module isn't installed, can you install it manually?
modprobe rtc
lsmod | grep rtc

I wrote:
> In your shoes I'd start by getting Nistnet running on a 2.4 series
> kernel. It may work with 2.6, but I don't know well.

I meant "but I don't know how well."

Allen,

Thank you for the detailed response. I'm going to try your
suggestions tonight after work, and I'll post back here with the
results.

Al

Allen,

> 2) If the RTC module compiled, did it install?
> find /lib/modules -name rtc.o -print
> Expected response:
> /lib/modules/VVVVV/kernel/drivers/char/rtc.o
> where VVVVV is your kernel version. If it's not there, then make
> modules_install messed up.

This is the problem. the command "find /lib/modules -name rtc.o -
print" does not yield any results. A manual check of the /lib/modules/
VVVVV/kernel/drivers/char/ folder confirms that rtc.o does not exist
in this folder. So make_modules is messing up.

I will try as you suggest, using make xconfig for the config, and
altering the EXTRAVERSION in Makefile - a great idea. wish me luck.

Al

Wow... when I tried recompiling the kernel, make, make modules, make
install and make_modules install all produced output, when I rebooted
though, the new kernel was not available. The two files that are
supposed to be referenced in grub.conf are not there, nor do they
exist anywhere as files. It appears they were not created. How to I
fix this? As far as I know, the make commands do not have any swutches
or options... any ideas?

Al wrote:
> Wow... when I tried recompiling the kernel, make, make modules, make
> install and make_modules install all produced output, when I rebooted
> though, the new kernel was not available. The two files that are
> supposed to be referenced in grub.conf are not there, nor do they
> exist anywhere as files. It appears they were not created. How to I
> fix this? As far as I know, the make commands do not have any swutches
> or options... any ideas?

Look carefully at the output of "make install" and see if you can
determine where it did put the kernel. Maybe something blew up and you
didn't notice. "produced output" and "worked" aren't necessarily the
same thing, especially if the last line of output is "Error..." Does
arch/i386/boot/bzImage exist? If not, what did make create in
arch/i386/boot? Run "ls -lt" on this directory. Run "ls -lt" on /boot
and see if you can see anything there. Maybe the kernel doesn't have
the name you think it has. What did you set EXTRAVERSION to? See if
make put the kernel in / instead of /boot. Run an appropriate "find"
and go have a coffee :-)

What do you mean by "The two files that are supposed to be referenced"?
Are there references to files that don't exist, or were there no
changes to grub.conf?

Finally, post relevant facts and command output. (Well, not the entire
output from the kernel build, but the last few lines if that's
relevant.) Tell us what version of RedHat you are trying this with, and
where you got the kernel source. The more precise you are, the easier
it is to figure out what has gone wrong. This is especially true when
you are forced to work with an OS version that is only a distant memory
for many of us.