Patch my kernel?

[eakergd]

I deleted this post off the laptops forum, because it is a question that belongs in the general help forum, and is not specific to laptops. So please don't lock this thread.

Help, please. I have a Sony Vaio F-series -- a lot of little stuff like the Sony keys, brightness, and the backlit keyboard are not working. I found a patch file, but I don't know how to apply it. Is it a patch for the kernel or the sony-laptop module? -- How do you tell? Anyway, if someone could help I would be most appreciative. The patch can be found here: http://code.google.com/p/vaio-f11-li...3-2.6.39.patch


Thanks,

Gary

[HiImTye]

from that page, if you go to 'project home' then you can see full instructions on how to use it

[eakergd]

Yes, that instruction file says to go to /usr/src/linux, but that directory doesn't exist on my system. I have /usr/src/linux-headers-3.0.0.12, and /usr/src/linux-headers-3.0.0.12-generic. Not sure which one has the kernel I need to patch.

I tried applying the patch in both of those directories, and all I got was a bunch of errors.

[Thewhistlingwind]

Open a terminal window:

Change directories to the one that your source files are in:

cd /path/to/your/directory

For example, for Music it would be:

cd /home/myusername/Music

OR

~/Music

The ~ expands to your home directory.

To apply the patch:

man patch

Will tell you more about the patch utility.

You'll have to go over the kernel sources with it. (You can download them from http://www.kernel.org/)

I'm pretty sure a copy of the Ubuntu version of the Linux kernel is in /usr/src/ and you can patch that version and compile it. (I only link kernel.org in case you want to go the whole mile and compile a whole new kernel. You probably just want the Ubuntu Linux kernel source.)

Theres Internet tutorials elsewhere on compiling your patched kernel.

[electrojustin]

Have you installed linux-source? If thats the case I believe it puts the source in a compressed file in /usr/src (maybe called linux-source-<your version number here>.tar.bz2?). It looks like the tutorial just sorta assumes you uncompress the source into /usr/src/linux.

[electrojustin]

Oh and a word of advice as far as kernel recompiling goes: you may want to use xconfig instead of menuconfig-I find it just overall easier to use.

[eakergd]

OK, thanks for the help so far. I downloaded the source files, so now I have linux-source-3.0. Now when I switch to that directory and attempt to patch, I am still getting errors. It says it cannot find the file to patch.

Here is the output of the patch program:

dad@dad-laptop:/usr/src/linux-source-3.0.0$ sudo patch -p1 < /home/dad/Desktop/vaio-test13-2.6.39.patch
can't find file to patch at input line 4
Perhaps you used the wrong -p or --strip option?
The text leading up to this was:
--------------------------
|Signed-off-by: Marco Chiappero <marco@absence.it>
|--- a/include/linux/sonypi.h 2011-04-19 06:26:00.000000000 +0200
|+++ b/include/linux/sonypi.h 2011-04-22 17:15:33.832788228 +0200
--------------------------
File to patch: linux-source-3.0.0.tar.bz2
patching file linux-source-3.0.0.tar.bz2
Hunk #1 FAILED at 114.
1 out of 1 hunk FAILED -- saving rejects to file linux-source-3.0.0.tar.bz2.rej
can't find file to patch at input line 14
Perhaps you used the wrong -p or --strip option?


It keeps giving me the same error for each hunk.

Any ideas what I should try next?

Thanks,

[eakergd]

bump

[pbrane]

OK, thanks for the help so far. I downloaded the source files, so now I have linux-source-3.0. Now when I switch to that directory and attempt to patch, I am still getting errors. It says it cannot find the file to patch.

Here is the output of the patch program:

dad@dad-laptop:/usr/src/linux-source-3.0.0$ sudo patch -p1 < /home/dad/Desktop/vaio-test13-2.6.39.patch
can't find file to patch at input line 4
Perhaps you used the wrong -p or --strip option?
The text leading up to this was:
--------------------------
|Signed-off-by: Marco Chiappero <marco@absence.it>
|--- a/include/linux/sonypi.h 2011-04-19 06:26:00.000000000 +0200
|+++ b/include/linux/sonypi.h 2011-04-22 17:15:33.832788228 +0200
--------------------------
File to patch: linux-source-3.0.0.tar.bz2
patching file linux-source-3.0.0.tar.bz2
Hunk #1 FAILED at 114.
1 out of 1 hunk FAILED -- saving rejects to file linux-source-3.0.0.tar.bz2.rej
can't find file to patch at input line 14
Perhaps you used the wrong -p or --strip option?


It keeps giving me the same error for each hunk.

Any ideas what I should try next?

Thanks,

This looks like a patch for the 2.6.39 kernel, it obviously isn't working for your 3.0.0 kernel. You need to find a patch for your specific kernel or see if the latest kernel has what you need. You may be able to look at the patch in a text editor and apply the code fix manually to the kernel source. You really need to know what you are doing though.

You can review this to see how to build a new kernel on ubuntu.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeam/GitKernelBuild

[matt_symes]

Hi

From the terminal, type

pwd

and

ls

Post back results here.

Kind regards