On Sun, Jun 27, 2004 at 10:12:40AM +0100, Graham wrote:
Thanks for pointing me at the kernel. I note that following installation and online update, the laptop and a third machine both report the kernel to be 2.6.4-52 whereas the troublesome machine is 2.6.5-7.75. Only the latter is unable to see the camera, and the network looks healthy on both the others. Does the odd-number minor version imply a risky kernel, and if so how do I get a sensible one back without reinstalling the system?
Dunno, should be easy in SuSE though :) It will involve installing an rpm and whatever to configure the bootloaded, SuSE may have its own "special" way though which I wouldn't want to interfere with :)
The odd version number doesn't imply a risky kernel at all, Linux kernel number works as Major Version, Minor Version, Release (ish, not sure what the "official" names are) so what you have is release 5 of version 2.6 If the 2nd number is an odd number then that will signify a development version of the kernel (i.e. 2.5.6 or 2.7.6 would be in development) but of course even now kernel 2.6 series can have a fair few bugs. The 7.75 part of the kernel name is what SuSE have added as their package/version number.
All that it looks like is that SuSE have released a new distro which perhaps hasn't had as much testing as it should have done, I would suspect that they would quite quickly release a new kernel to fix these bugs. If not, you can either try downgrading your kernel or building your own :)
Adam