I use own customized kernel in which I've disabled all unnecessary ethernet drivers. The fact is that new alx driver from 2012-12-19 tree depends on CONFIG_MDIO, and if I do not select in-kernel driver that depends on it (e.g., some broadcom or so), inserting compiled alx module gives me this: === [ 44.248978] alx: Unknown symbol mdio_mii_ioctl (err 0) === I've got this fixed by adding into drivers/net/ethernet/atheros/Kconfig of my kernel tree "select MDIO" for Atheros drivers without selecting any other drivers. Probably, it's possible to get it fixed in compat-drivers tree?
compat-drivers-3.8.3-2-snpu with kernel-3.8.3-ck on Gentoo Linux still not working - the same error applies ! And I'm still not able to load the module - always the same error --- [ 2981.813060] alx: Unknown symbol mdio_mii_ioctl (err 0) ---
compat-drivers-3.9-rc4-2-su or compat-drivers-2013-03-28-5-u with kernel-3.9.4-gentoo on Gentoo Linux still not working. alx: Unknown symbol mdio_mii_ioctl (err 0)
Still a problem with nshulman@nvshp:/usr/src/linux $ uname -r 3.9.5-hardened and backports-20130618
The ALX driver needs MDIO and we do not provide that in backports. When you do not use a normal distribution kernel with lots of modules activate you have to activate some dependencies in your kernel by yourself. Sadly CONFIG_MDIO is a hidden option so you have to build some other Ethernet driver which depends on that option. We do ot want to fix this in backports.