Lost in unresolved module symbol hell...

[Dennis McMurchy <denismcm@example.com>]

  I'm certainly no hacker, but I've been rolling my own kernels for
over four years now and did manage to roll a few 2.5.5 kernels under my
former RH6.0 setup, but I'm stumped right now.   The new 2.2.14 kernel
that I'm trying to roll right now works OK, but all the modules are
broken.

  I "upgraded" to RH6.2 finally on Sunday.  Of course, this broke at least
a dozen things in my setup, but sound was working fine (a nice surprise)
and running the 'vmware-config.pl' script happily recompiled all the 
necessary modules so that vmware was working again.

  Anyhow, I wanted to roll my own kernel with ATAPI->SCSI masquerade -
and, besides, the boot floppy that I was using to start RH6.2 crapped
out, meaning that I had to fall back on my old kernel 2.5.5 boot disk - so
I did all the usual stuff (from /usr/src/linux, which is a link to 
/usr/src/linux-2.2.14, where the latest source tree resides): make xconfig
and then
make clean; make dep; make bzImage; make modules; make modules_install
and then
dd if=/usr/src/linux-2.2.14/arch/i386/boot/bzImage  of=/dev/fd0 bs=32k

  When I boot the kernel, however, I get a whole slew of error messages
about unresolved symbols in modules (although everything but modules works):

Oct 17 07:20:52 tangrending depmod: depmod:
Oct 17 07:20:52 tangrending depmod: *** Unresolved symbols in /lib/modules/2.2.14-5.0/fs/autofs.o
Oct 17 07:20:52 tangrending depmod: depmod: *** Unresolved symbols in /lib/modules/2.2.14-5.0/fs/coda.o
Oct 17 07:20:52 tangrending depmod: depmod: *** Unresolved symbols in /lib/modules/2.2.14-5.0/fs/fat.o

  This goes on for about 24 screens' worth!

  I did notice a message right at the beginning of the boot saying that
no module symbols were loaded:

Oct 17 07:21:09 tangrending syslogd 1.3-3: restart.
Oct 17 07:21:09 tangrending syslog: syslogd startup succeeded
Oct 17 07:21:09 tangrending kernel: klogd 1.3-3, log source = /proc/kmsg started.
Oct 17 07:21:09 tangrending kernel: Inspecting /boot/System.map-2.2.14-5.0
Oct 17 07:21:09 tangrending syslog: klogd startup succeeded
Oct 17 07:21:09 tangrending kernel: Loaded 7364 symbols from /boot/System.map-2.2.14-5.0.
Oct 17 07:21:09 tangrending kernel: Symbols match kernel version 2.2.14.
Oct 17 07:21:09 tangrending kernel: No module symbols loaded.

  There's also a single error message during the startup, which may or may
not be relevant:

Oct 17 07:20:50 tangrending sysctl: error: 'kernel.sysrq' is an unknown key

  I'm afraid I'm stumped, though the answer is probably staring me in the
face.  Why are no module symbols being loaded?  This _must_ be relevant,
but I don't understand what's going on.

  When I try to recompile the vmware modules, the script complains that my
running kernel must have had different C header files (even though I'm
running a freshly-rolled kernel that definitely was compiled from the 
source tree under the default /usr/src/linux):

None of VMware's pre-built vmmon modules is suitable for your running kernel. Doyou want this script to try to build the vmmon module for your system (you need to have a C compiler installed on your system)? [yes] 

What is the location of the directory of C header files that match your running kernel? [/usr/src/linux/include] 

Extracting the sources of the vmmon module.

Building the vmmon module.

make: Entering directory `/tmp/vmware/vmware-config/979/vmmon-only'
make[1]: Entering directory `/tmp/vmware/vmware-config/979/vmmon-only'
make[2]: Entering directory `/tmp/vmware/vmware-config/979/vmmon-only/driver-2.2.14-5.0'
make[2]: Leaving directory `/tmp/vmware/vmware-config/979/vmmon-only/driver-2.2.14-5.0'
make[2]: Entering directory `/tmp/vmware/vmware-config/979/vmmon-only/driver-2.2.14-5.0'
make[1]: Leaving directory `/tmp/vmware/vmware-config/979/vmmon-only'
make: Leaving directory `/tmp/vmware/vmware-config/979/vmmon-only'
Unable to build a correct vmmon module. There is probably a light difference of kernel configuration between the set of C header files you specified and your 
running kernel. You may want to rebuild a kernel based on that directory, or 
specify another directory.

Execution aborted.

  This vmware module recompile ran perfectly smoothly under the initial 
system I had booted from the floppy that was produced during the "upgrade".
When that floppy failed and until I could roll my own 2.2.14 kernel, I
was booting the system from the old 2.5.5  kernel floppy that I had
been using for months.   

  Sorry for the long, boring cry for help, but I sure hope that this 
all makes sense to someone out there.

  Cheers, Dennis

-- 
Dennis McMurchy, 
Sointula, B.C. / Tojinmachi, Fukuoka
Canada           Japan