sk98lin for 2.6.23-rc1

[Kyle Rose <krose@akamai.com>]

>From http://www.krose.org/~krose/computing.html:

Since the sky2 driver continues to suck ass (which is a technical
description for "it hangs all the time under load, at least on my
hardware" :-) ), I've fixed the sk98lin driver to compile for
linux-2.6.23-rc1. Those who continue to have problems with sky2 can
still use 2.6.23-rc1, simply by doing the following:

   1.

      Make sure you have the headers for your kernel properly installed
      and linked to /usr/src/linux-$KVER.

   2.

      Download the sk98lin source from Marvell's site
      <http://www.marvell.com/drivers/search.do>.

   3.

      Untar the driver and run the install.sh according to the
      directions. It will fail.

   4.

      Look in /tmp for a directory called Sk98something. Go to
      http://www.krose.org/~krose/projects/sk98lin/ and copy the
      Makefile <http://www.krose.org/%7Ekrose/projects/sk98lin/Makefile>
      and sky2.c <http://www.krose.org/%7Ekrose/projects/sk98lin/sky2.c>
      into /tmp/Sk98something/all.

   5.

      Change into /tmp/Sk98something/all and execute:

          sudo -H make -C /usr/src/linux-$KVER M=`pwd` modules
          sudo -H make -C /usr/src/linux-$KVER M=`pwd` modules_install

   6.

      Blacklist sky2 in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist, and (maybe not
      necessary) manually load sk98lin in /etc/modules.

There. You're done. Stable networking at last... er, again.

Unfortunately, you lose the nicest differential feature of
sky2---WOL---but that's a small price to pay for networking stability of
a desktop machine. It's nice to be able to watch MythTV again without
having to sudo bash -c 'ifdown eth0; rmmod sky2; modprobe sky2; ifup
eth0' every few minutes.


Personally, I'd like to see sk98lin remain in the kernel proper until
sky2 goes at least 6 months without reported problems.  The fact that I
am not the only one still seeing issues is a clear indication that sky2
(even with the recent patches in 2.6.23-rc1) is not yet ready to replace
sk98lin.

I'm happy to help debug the remaining issues with sky2, Stephen; just
let me know what information you need.

Kyle

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