[hcflinux] Re: hcf modem driver crashes my Gentoo 2.6.1 box

[Richard Leonard]

I've had this problem too, on Gentoo 2.6.0 and 2.6.1, using 
hcfpcimodem-1.00lnxt04011900. and module-init-tools version 0.9.15-pre4 
(though the same happens with version 3 also).

As far as I can tell, what seems to be going on is this. Modprobe loads the 
first two modules in the dependency chain, hcfpciosspec and hcfpciengine. 
However, when it comes to load hcfpciserial, it fails with the complaint that 
hcfpcihw (the final module) has two unknown symbols, cnxthcf_cnxt_serial_add 
and cnxthcf_cnxt_serial_remove. According 
to /lib/modules/2.6.1-gentoo/modules.symbols, these are aliased to 
hcfpciserial.  So the problem seems to be that hcfpcihw is trying to load 
before hcfpciserial, on which it depends. insmod is able to insert the 
modules so long as it's done in the correct order.

The inelegant kludge that I've come up with is to edit /etc/modules.d/hcfpci 
and remove the final line, which reads:

probeall hcfpciserial hcfpcihw

Now, if I have to reboot, the modules load OK either with modprobe or when I 
use a dialup utility which calls modprobe, like kppp. 

I'm not too clear about this stuff, so if someone can explain it properly, I'd 
be most grateful. Anyway, it works for me. Your mileage may vary, of course.

Hope this helps. 

Richard