[General Questions and Answers] brian_o'fish:
Just for fun and because I can, I started to work on recompiling the kernel for my Archos 10.1 (gen8) device.

I'm working with the Archos provided gen8_gpl_froyo source tarball.

Apart from some small stuff I could work out, like unterminated double quoted strings in config.in files, patches that don't apply to sources because the sources contain symlinks where files are expected, and of course the rounds of what-do-I-need-on-my-host (automake, texinfo, ...) - I got both a working kernel compile, and all the rest of the build.

I proceeded to menuconfig in some stuff I'd like to have in the kernel, as modules, like netfilter conntracking / NAT support, advanced (policy) routing, namespaces, nfsd. Also went smoothly.

I can successfully start that kernel on an existing Uruk 0.7 install, by untarring my self built modules over what Uruk comes with in /lib/modules/2.6.29-omap1/kernel, depmod that, and use the Uruk's /root/initramfs.cpio.gz together with my self built zImage for flashing through the recovery menu.

The system then boots up fine, I can verify it is running the kernel, I can load the netfilter conntracking / NAT modules, and even install an state ESTABLISHED rule which does what it should.

HOWEVER - and that's why I open this thread, there is constant chatter, coming from the kernel, being written to logcat. This uses quite a bit of CPU, probably for the logging work, so I rapidly reverted to the Uruk's own kernel.

What I would like to know, is whether somebody else has seen the following kernel messages in a similar scenario, and knows what I did wrong / how I can work around that?

03-06 15:33:56.816 I/cat ( 1020): <6>tmdlHdmiTxHdcpCheck 4245
03-06 15:33:56.816 I/cat ( 1020): <3>Bad input instance value returned in hdcp_check line 729
03-06 15:33:56.847 I/cat ( 1020): <6>tmdlHdmiTxHdcpCheck 4245
03-06 15:33:56.847 I/cat ( 1020): <3>Bad input instance value returned in hdcp_check line 729
03-06 15:33:56.878 I/cat ( 1020): <6>tmdlHdmiTxHdcpCheck 4245
03-06 15:33:56.878 I/cat ( 1020): <3>Bad input instance value returned in hdcp_check line 729

It is a constant repetition of these two lines, I just showed three instances so you can get a feel for the frequency from the timestamps.

The function names / messages are nowhere to be found in the archos released source code, nor in the modules compiled from there.

They reside in two module files that lie directly in /lib/modules/, named hdmicec.ko and hdmitx.ko

The hdmitx.ko module is loaded when I boot into my kernel. Loading hdmicec.ko by hand does not improve the situation. Also, under the normal Uruk 0.7 kernel, only the hdmitx.ko is loaded.

Update 7.3.: the situation stays the same after I modified my .config to be, except for the diverse modules I additionally selected, identical to the kernel /proc/config.gz found on Uruk 0.7. There seem to be several things missing that are in Uruk 0.7, i.e. the interactive CPU governor, and filesystem caches.

I also compared the loaded modules after boot, and apart from module size, it is the same list with Uruk 0.7 and my kernel.

Trying again to use my kernel, I also noticed that the tablet freezes as soon as I try to start WLAN. Still pings (on the g_ether USB connection I use), but the GUI is frozen and ssh connections, too.

It seems to me that the gen8_froyo_gpl source released by Archos is somewhat lacking...

Where can I find the Uruk 0.7 kernel tree, or some other kernel that is Known Good?