Recently when trying to build a new 2.4 kernel or add-ons like alsa, I was not able to insmod any module : # modprobe vfat /lib/modules/2.4.26-ppc-r4/kernel/fs/fat/fat.o: couldn't find the kernel version the module was compiled for /lib/modules/2.4.26-ppc-r4/kernel/fs/fat/fat.o: insmod /lib/modules/2.4.26-ppc-r4/kernel/fs/fat/fat.o failed /lib/modules/2.4.26-ppc-r4/kernel/fs/fat/fat.o: insmod vfat failed The modules don't have any kernel_version information in. This is due to gcc-3.3.3 which discards unusued static variables (see url). Looking at linux-2.4 Changelog on BitKeeper include/linux/module.h changed 4 months ago to cope with this problem : http://linux.bkbits.net:8080/linux-2.4/hist/include/linux/module.h?nav=index.html|src/|src/include|src/include/linux The url can be used to create a patch to solve this problem. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: emerge -v ppc-sources [...] make oldconfig make dep && make vmlinux modules modules_install [... after reboot with new kernel ..] modprobe usb-storage (or any module) Actual Results: Can't load any module Expected Results: Load kernel modules # LC_ALL=C gcc -v Reading specs from /usr/lib/gcc-lib/powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu/3.3.3/specs Configured with: /home/portage/tmp/portage/gcc-3.3.3_pre20040408-r1/work/gcc-20040408/configure --prefix=/usr --enable-shared --host=powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu --enable-languages=c,c++,f77,objc,java --enable-threads=posix --enable-long-long --disable-checking --enable-__cxa_atexit --with-gxx-include-dir=/usr/lib/gcc-lib/powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu/3.3.3/include/g++-v3 --with-local-prefix=/usr/local --enable-shared --enable-nls --without-included-gettext --x-includes=/usr/X11R6/include --x-libraries=/usr/X11R6/lib --enable-interpreter --enable-java-awt=xlib --with-x --disable-multilib --with-system-zlib --enable-cstdio=stdio --enable-clocale=generic --enable-version-specific-runtime-libs --target=powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu --bindir=/usr/powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu/gcc-bin/3.3 --includedir=/usr/lib/gcc-lib/powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu/3.3.3/include --datadir=/usr/share/gcc-data/powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu/3.3 --mandir=/usr/share/gcc-data/powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu/3.3/man --infodir=/usr/share/gcc-data/powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu/3.3/info Thread model: posix gcc version 3.3.3 (Gentoo Linux 3.3.3_pre20040408-r1) # emerge info Portage 2.0.50-r9 (default-ppc-2004.1, gcc-3.3.3, glibc-2.3.3.20040420-r0, 2.4.26-ppc-r4) ================================================================= System uname: 2.4.26-ppc-r4 ppc 7455, altivec supported Gentoo Base System version 1.5.2 Autoconf: sys-devel/autoconf-2.59-r4 Automake: sys-devel/automake-1.8.5-r1 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="ppc ~ppc" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CFLAGS="-O2 -pipe -mcpu=7400 -maltivec -mabi=altivec" CHOST="powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu" COMPILER="gcc3" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3.1/share/config /usr/kde/3.2/share/config /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/lib/mozilla/defaults/pref /usr/share/config /var/qmail/control" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-O2 -pipe -mcpu=7400 -maltivec -mabi=altivec" DISTDIR="/home/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="ccache" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://gentoo.mirror.sdv.fr http://128.213.5.34/gentoo/ http://gentoo.inode.at/ http://ds.thn.htu.se/linux/gentoo" MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/home/portage/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.fr.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="X X509 aalib alsa altivec arts berkdb bonobo cdr crypt cups dga dillo directfb dv dvd dvdr encode esd faad fbcon ffmpeg flash foomaticdb gd gdbm ggi gif gnome gnome-libs gphoto2 gpm gstreamer gtk gtk2 gtkhtml imagemagick imlib java javascript jpeg libcaca libwww mad matroska mitshm motif mozilla moznocompose moznoirc moznomail mpeg mpeg4 ncurses nls odbc offensive oggvorbis opengl oss pam pdflib perl pg-hier png ppc ppds python quicktime radeon readline sdl slang spell ssl tcltk tcpd theora tiff truetype video_cards_radeon wmf xface xine xmms xv xvid zlib"
We have deprecated the 2.4 kernel. A workaround is to downgrade your gcc to 3.2.