New problems when compiling under 3.8.1

[redss]

Under an earlier version of knoppix (3.4) I was able
to compile a webcam driver without errors.

Now under knoppix 3.8.1 liveCD, I had errors and
discovered that knoppix 3.8.1 does not contain the
necessary header files in the directory
/lib/modules/2.6.11/build/include/linux (The
corresponding directory did indeed contain the
required header files in 3.4)

So I downloaded the kernel source for 3.8.1 and
untarred it into /usr/src/2.6.11, which is where the
symbolic link /lib/modules/2.6.11/build points to.
(This is only possible now with UNIONFS, which is the
only reason I'm upgrading to 3.8)

I was hoping (guessing) that this would fix the
problem of missing header files, however now I am
getting a slew of error messages (from
/lib/modules/2.6.11/build/include/linux/kernel.h)
like:
error: parse error before "size_t"
warning: function declaration isn't a prototype
warning: conflicting types for built-in function
`snprintf'

Apparently this liveCD is not completely configured
for compiling certain source code, since these errors
did not come up in v3.4.

What do I need to do to prepare the 3.8.1 environment
for compiling?

[fingers99]

These errors might point to using a later version of GCC than the one intended to compile the source. This is because the later GCC gets, the more ansi compliant it gets and the more it complains about bad coding. Such is life.

Now, I don't have 3.8.1, but if

locate gcc

reveals more than one version of gcc, you might try either setting the environment variable to the earlier one or setting thee symbolic link to point to the earlier version. I can't remember how to do the former, but the latter is a symlink in /usr/bin/ which points (by default) to the later version (in my case 3.3 -- the old one is 2.95 -- but I'm using a HD install of 3.6).

[redss]

well even though the older knoppix v3.4 included gcc 2.95, /usr/bin/gcc was a link to gcc 3.3.3, although gcc 2.95 was included in the distro.

the gcc in knoppix 3.8.1 points to gcc 3.3.5. Also 3.8.1 does not include gcc-2.95 in the distro.

Since both knoppix versions 3.3 and 3.8 seem to be using gcc 3.3.x, I don't think that is the issue, right?

[redss]

Anyone?

[echo6]

No sorry, but I'm having similar issues trying to install drivers for a USB 54g dongle.

I've also downloaded the latest stable kernel from www.kernel.org and attempted to compile that with similar errors

I have to be honest that I'm confused about the differences between the kernel-headers, kernel-kbuild, kernel-source and kernel-tree that are available in the Debian packages.

You could try

apt-get install kernel-kbuild-2.6-3

it didn't work for me though

Just noticed that 3.8.2 has been released http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=02640#0 I will be trying that later today.