I'm sure the answer is quite simple, and I'm displaying my ignorance, but
I haven't figured it out. If someone could help me out, it would save me a
lot of time!
I have been seeing the problem also. It really is a bug. "make" is
supposed to ensure that no file is recompiled needlessly.
The quick fix is to disable module versions -- set CONFIG_MODVERSIONS
off. I haven't gotten to the bottom of the matter, but it seems that
the problem is that if your genksyms isn't working quite right, make
winds up regenerating include/linux/modversions.h and/or module.h
every time you attempt to compile the kernel, and many, many files
depend on those .h files.
I have some suspicion that the root problem is that (1) genksyms was
changed significantly in one of the recent releases of the module
utilities, (2) 2.1.* depends on the new version, (3) this fact isn't
documented in, e.g., the README, (4) the makefile doesn't test for the
new version and abort if it isn't present.
Dale
-- Dale R. Worley Ariadne Internet Services Voice: +1 617-899-7949 Fax: +1 617-899-7946 E-mail: worley@ariadne.com "Internet-based electronic commerce solutions to real business problems."