4. Adding Traffic Control and Packet Shaping - Testing the new Kernel

You now have a compiled kernel file, so let's test that it works. The Cromwell BIOS uses a text file to decide where to boot from. Let's launch vi to edit it:

vi /boot/linuxboot.cfg

It should contain the following:

title v2_4
kernel /boot/vmlinuz
append root=/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part2 devfs=mount kbd-reset xbox=hdd
xboxfb y

Change it so that it looks like this:

title v2_6
kernel /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/boot/bzImage
append root=/dev/hda2 devfs=mount kbd-reset xbox=hdd
xboxfb y

title v2_4
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.31-xbox
append root=/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part2 devfs=mount kbd-reset xbox=hdd
xboxfb y

default v2_6

Now save and quit the file and reboot your Xbox with reboot . If your Xbox isn't attached to your television, then you will miss any error messages and warnings that might appear. If it booted successfully, then within a minute or two you should be able to SSH into it and your greeting message should reflect this new version of the kernel.

If it doesn't work, then plug it back into your television, reboot it and keep an eye out for errors as to why it isn't working. To boot back to your working 2.4 kernel you will need to use your USB keyboard to navigate to the boot menu in the Cromwell BIOS and select your old kernel which we named v2_4 earlier.

If the upgrade was successful, then you need to make your change more permanent:

cd /usr/src/linux/
make install

When prompted, answer no to creating a boot disk. This will copy your kernel image file into /boot/ and update your vmlinuz symlink file to point to your new kernel. You can now change your linuxboot.config file to look like the following:

title v2_6
kernel /usr/src/vmlinuz
append root=/dev/hda2 devfs=mount kbd-reset xbox=hdd
xboxfb y

title v2_4
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.31-xbox
append root=/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part2 devfs=mount kbd-reset xbox=hdd
xboxfb y

default v2_6

By the way, I found that when I booted up after my upgrade to 2.6 some of the modules would not load. I am not entirely sure why some of them wouldn't load since I definitely compiled them! One issue I found was that the keyboard and mouse modules changed names between 2.4 and 2.6. In 2.4 they were called mousedev and keybdev but now are called usbmouse and usbkeyb.

To change the name, edit the file /etc/modules.xbox and rename the appropriate references. Strictly speaking, we don't need either of these modules since we have a headless install, but it does no harm to have them. The other ones that the kernel complained it couldn't load I didn't need, so I commented them out so my file looked like this:

loop
#input
usbkbd
#usbmouse
#joydev
sunrpc
lockd
nfs
#scsi_mod
#sd_mod
#hid
#xpad
#xir
#lirc_dev
#lirc_xir
#snd-intel8x0