Bug 189803 – sys-libs/libieee1284 conflict with kernels >=2.6.21

• Status: RESOLVED FIXED
• Product: Gentoo Linux

[Description Mario Hein 2007-08-22 08:40:43 UTC]

My old parallel port scanner stopped working since kernel 2.6.21. This seems to happen due to a bug in libieee1284 or the kernel itself. The connection to the scanner can't be established anymore. This happens with every kernel >= 2.6.21 and every libieee1284 version in the portage tree.
I 've found a site where the problem is discussed, but no solution has been found for this.

Here is the link:
http://www.mail-archive.com/[e-mail]/msg177585.html

Reproducible: Always

[Comment 1 SpanKY 2007-08-22 22:59:41 UTC]

so narrow it down between it being a userspace API breakage from kernel headers or the kernel being broken

boot a 2.6.20 kernel and install 2.6.20 headers and rebuild libieee1284 and see if it works

if that does, upgrade your kernel only and see if libieee1284 still works

[Comment 2 Mario Hein 2007-08-23 13:21:04 UTC]

So...i followed your instructions and here are the results:
(i used libieee1284 in the unstable version 0.2.10 because it's the most recent version in portage)

gentoo-sources-2.6.20-r8
linux-headers-2.6.17-r2
libieee1284-0.2.10
--> scanner works

gentoo-sources-2.6.21-r4
linux-headers-2.6.17-r2
libieee1284-0.2.10
-->scanner doesn't work

seems that changes have been made to the kernel

[Comment 3 SpanKY 2007-08-23 18:07:35 UTC]

great ... for posterity sake, could you also test:
gentoo-sources-2.6.20-r8
linux-headers-2.6.21+
libieee1284-0.2.10

[Comment 4 Mario Hein 2007-08-23 20:18:24 UTC]

OK... here the results for:
gentoo-sources-2.6.20-r8
linux-headers-2.6.21
libieee1284-0.2.10

functional ;)

[Comment 5 Carlos Silva (RETIRED) 2007-08-29 15:50:36 UTC]

ok... after investigating this problem, i found out that since kernel 2.6.21 the sysctl interface in procfs (/proc/sys/) had some changes in it. One of them was the hardlink count of dirs and files. From .21 onwards, all dirs under /proc/sys will have hardlink count = 0 and all files = 1. So, this means that libieee1284 should be fixed because i tests this values.
The patch to libieee1284 can be found in here: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1739643&group_id=29314&atid=395778

[Comment 6 Carlos Silva (RETIRED) 2007-08-29 22:56:38 UTC]

just to clear things up, this is the original patch that makes this behavior "normal" aka "the expected behavior from kernel":
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commitdiff;h=77b14db502cb85a031fe8fde6c85d52f3e0acb63
(see function proc_sys_refresh_inode)

[Comment 7 Simone Scanzoni 2007-10-11 23:52:05 UTC]

Created attachment 133223 [details]
libieee1284-0.2.11.ebuild

Problem solved with version 0.2.11, found on the SourceForge site.

[Comment 8 SpanKY 2007-10-12 14:54:08 UTC]

added to the tree ... do not post ebuilds as attachments if you didnt change anything, just say "renaming the old ebuild worked for the new version"