Kernel Konfusion [SOLVED]

[Dave99]

Hi all

I'm running Porteus desktop (3.13.6) on a computer from USB stick (sda1).

According to fanthom's instructions, I have copied the desktop kernel (000-kernel.xzm) from /mnt/sda1/porteus/base
and placed it in another directory named:

/mnt/sda1/modifications/KioskISO-ToBuild/porteus/base to replace the original kiosk kernel.
(also copied vmlinuz from desktop).

I then make a hybrid iso, booted off USB stick on another computer and when I run uname -r, it reports 3.13.6-porteus-kiosk and not 3.13.6-porteus
and as a consequence, it will not load pl2303.ko reporting "Invalid module format".

I have double checked that the kernel is from the desktop edition and yet it reports it's from the kiosk edition.

Any help appreciated as to what I might be doing wrong.

Thank you.
Dave.


UPDATE:

I have found that under /lib/modules (in the running modified kisok) there are two directories, namely:

3.13.6-porteus and 3.13.6-porteus-kiosk

Surely this is wrong? although I definitely used the 000-kernel.xzm from the desktop edition.
Could the 3.13.6-porteus-kiosk directory be created/added by the make_iso.sh script somehow?

I also tried insmod a .ko from the porteus-kiosk and it worked but the ones from the proteus (desktop) edition failed with the error described above.
I also noticed that the insmod version from the desktop edition is kmod ver 16 whilst that from the kiosk edition is kmod version 15 if that has any bearing.

[Dave99]

OK another update.

Found that the second "kernel" i.e. 3.13.6-porteus-kiosk is being created from 001-core.xzm
Should I rather take it out (the directory that is) and thus only have one "kernel" i.e. the one from 000-kernel.xzm (from the desktop edition)?
If so, will it not have other repercussions or does the kiosk simply run 3.13.6-porteus-kiosk because it's newer as it was created when 001-core.xzm was loaded
which is after 000-kernel.xzm?

Dave.

[Dave99]

Right solved, my silly mistake.
Got confused between the vmlinuz from desktop and kiosk and was still using the one from kiosk.

The way I found it was looking at the contents of both vmlinuz files.
The one from kiosk points to 3.13.6-porteus-kiosk at offset 0x03150, whilst the one from desktop points to 3.13.6-porteus at offset 0x033A0

Interestingly, the vmlinuz from the desktop edition is a DOS executable (MZ signature in the header).
Had a good laugh about that, using a DOS executable to load a linux kernel.

[Dave99]

Another method to check for which vmlinuz is which (for those that also change them around) is:

Code: Select all

strings /path/to/vmlinuz | grep porteus

It will return either 3.13.6-porteus (plus some other info) or 3.13.6-porteus-kiosk.

The 3.13.6 version number will change according to the one that is being used.

[fanthom]

you could also run 'file vmlinuz'
(file utility must be in recent version)

[Dave99]

Thanks fanthom.

I'm actually very glad I made a mistake with the two versions of vmlinuz as it forced me to investigate further
and in doing so taught me a lot about the "nitty-gritty" of Porteus which I otherwise would have just glanced over.

Dave.