Extract, make and install drivers

[rosco99]

Extract, make and install drivers
I downloaded a driver file and placed it on my home/rosco99 directory.
Instructions to install are as follows:
in a terminal
#cd <directory of source>
# tar -zxf sierra.v.X.Y.Z
cd sierra.v.X.Y.Z

This did not work ---error not a directory.

So I right clicked on the mouse and chose extract to: sierra and I got a file that had 3 files in it.
Makefile, Sierra.c and one other empty file.

I then tried to instal the driver using these instructions
# sudo cd /sierra directory
#make
#make install

I was already in the /home/rosco99 directory so I
did #make --and received
make -C/lib/modules/2.6.18.2-34-default/build SUBDIRS=home/rosco99 modules
make[1]: Entering directory '/usr/src/linux-2.6.18.2-34-obj/i386/defaultt'
make[1]: ***No rule to make target 'modules'. Stop.
make [1]: Leaving directory 'usr/src/linux-2.6.18.2-34-obj/i386/default'
make:[default] Error 2

when i did make install I got
install:cannot stat 'sierra.ko': No such file or directory
make: 'install' is up to date.

I am using KDE whereas the original instructions were for Gnome.

Advice gratefully accepted.

[askrieger]

Re: Extract, make and install drivers

First of all, do you really need to install whatever "Sierra" is from a tarball? (*)buntu is sufficiently popular that you can often find a deb package. If there isn't one for (*)buntu, there may be one for Debian. If so, try it, it might (or might not) work, and it's worth a try to save yourself some effort. Personally, I really, really hate to compile things that I didn't code myself.

Second, a trivial question: You show your prompt as '#' instead of as '$'. In most of the shells that I'm familiar with that indicates that YOU'RE LOGGED IN AS ROOT. That's is normally considered a VERY BAD THING. Among things, on (*)buntu you shouldn't even have a root account! See this page at the Ubuntu Community Help Wiki, for general advice, and this thread here, for my own experience.

Third, whenever, you extract a tarball, you should add v (for verbose) to the command e.g. "tar -xvzf <whatever>". In addition, the first character after the hyphen MUST one of Acdrtux because that's the command that tar is going to run.

Fourth, there is a difference between 'z' and 'Z'. They are different compression methods. (If you had used the v in the command string, you would have gotten a message about that, if you had used the wrong one.)

Fifth, it's quite unusual to find an empty file in a tarball. I suspect that you may have had a problem in the download. Was there an md5 sum that you might have downloaded, as well?

Finally, after the make failed, there was no point in trying to install, because there was nothing to install.

If it's cheap enough, I'd replace the offending hardware with something that's better supported in Linux. Then I'd write a letter to the manufacturer telling her why I stopped using her hardware.