[vox-tech] more kernel woes

[Peter Jay Salzman]

here's the deal as i understand it.

there has been a kernel building bug for a very long time (years?) that
certain symbols get thrown away during the linking process.

the linker, ld, was "forgiving" of this error.  i take that to mean that it
must have gotten the symbols from somewhere else.

the recent versions of ld do the "right thing" by reporting an error and
dying.  previous versions of ld did the "wrong thing" by not reporting the
error and not dying.

this means that with an updated binutils, you won't be able to compile *any*
kernels, at least not until the kernel building process gets fixed.  work is
being done on it right now.  2.4.17 will be fixed.  patches exist for 2.4.16.
presumably, 2.5.2 will also be fixed.

so:

don't blow away your kernels just yet.  if it works, leave it be.  i'll
monitor the situation and report anything i learn.

pete

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