Make a tar#$%* Part 2

Installing drivers being central to the whole Linux experience, I took another jab at trying to figure out what the reams of text blurted out by the "make clean modules" command meant.

The first search on google revealed that to utilise make, one needs the kernel source code. To check if the kernel source is installed use the "rpm -q kernel-sources" command. I bet this can also be used for any application. The source was not included in the Opensuse installation I was on, and probably is not available in any live CD, for a reason that I found soon after.

I tried using the application manager to check for the availability of the source. Shock : the source is about 250 MB!

By the way, drivers are usually created specifically for each kernel version, and though the driver source size is comparatively insignificant (a few KBs), the command to find the kernel version is "uname -a". The application manager listed the source for the correct version. This need not always be the case, as I found out during my google forays.

250 MB is a strong motivation to look for other possibilities, but finding none, I prepared to download the source.A pleasant surprise awaited me, when I discovered that the actual download size was less than 50 MB. The 250 MB referred to the decompressed size, probably.

Post download and auto configuration, I reran the make clean modules command. This went past smoothly. The next command make install also did not throw up any problems. The depmod -a
and insmod ./src/r8168.ko commands also did not have any hiccups.

The readme file also provided some diagnostic commands to check if the driver had been installed, and these seemed to indicate that it was indeed the case.

I tried using the GUI to see if any changes had happened. Indeed the driver had changed from 8169 to 8168 which is the correct number of the chip.

But since the proof of the pudding is in the eating, I tried accessing the Net. Alas, this was not possible. Before going through all this, even with the automatically installed 8169 driver I was facing the same problem. A restart also did not help. So the attempt on the whole was not a success.

The sole consolation I could extract was that I had experienced my first compile and install session, and except for the initial hiccups, it went smoothly.

Now while the information to install a driver is readily available, how to accomplish uninstallation is not.