Kernel Build Issue for 2.4.31 on Alpha AXP Cabriolet Variant

[bdupree]

To Whomever Might Be Interested,

This humble acolyte runs a couple of ancient Alpha AXP 21064 boxes (using
Debian Sarge), and recently when upgrading the kernel from 2.4.18 to
2.4.31 (compiling vanilla sources off of www.kernel.org) I found that the
build would fail when linking the kernel binary. The error was an
unresolved reference to:

     ns87312_enable_ide()

The Alpha variant used was "Cabriolet." The Cabriolet's are rather old,
circa 1995 or '96, motherboards based around the 21064, so I doubt that
there are many of them still running, but I like mine just the same ;-)

Anyhow, a simple one line fix to the arch/alpha/kernel/Makefile solves
this problem (patch file is attached). I've also attached the config file
I used for the build, as well as the boot messages from the kernel built
after the patch was applied.

And yes, I'm happily writing this email on my ancient Alpha box from
within Mozilla, on a KDE 3.3 desktop, running atop that patched 2.4.31
kernel. And while this old Alpha may not be the fastest 64-bit computer on
the block, it's still usable!

(BTW - Kernel 2.6.12.3 builds and runs fine on these old beasts, too.)

Thanks for all your efforts. I hope my contribution helps in some small way.

Sincerely,

--Bill DuPree

P.S. If you need any additional info, or have a response to share, please
replay to my email. Thanks.
diff -urw linux-2.4.31/arch/alpha/kernel/Makefile linux-2.4.31-patched/arch/alpha/kernel/Makefile
--- linux-2.4.31/arch/alpha/kernel/Makefile	2003-11-28 12:26:19.000000000 -0600
+++ linux-2.4.31-patched/arch/alpha/kernel/Makefile	2005-07-27 21:34:54.000000000 -0500
@@ -76,7 +76,7 @@
 obj-y    += sys_alcor.o
 endif
 ifneq ($(CONFIG_ALPHA_CABRIOLET)$(CONFIG_ALPHA_EB164)$(CONFIG_ALPHA_EB66P)$(CONFIG_ALPHA_LX164)$(CONFIG_ALPHA_PC164),)
-obj-y    += sys_cabriolet.o
+obj-y    += sys_cabriolet.o ns87312.o
 endif
 
 obj-$(CONFIG_ALPHA_DP264) += sys_dp264.o

Attachment: a275.cfg
Description: Binary data

Attachment: dmesg
Description: Binary data