how to remove manually installed gspca modules

[Thomas Kaiser]

On 06/03/2009 10:10 PM, H.S. wrote:
> Thomas Kaiser wrote:
>> On 06/03/2009 09:30 PM, H.S. wrote:
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> I tried to get VX-1000 to work in Jaunty (kernel 2.6.28) by downloading
>>> the gspca source from http://linuxtv.org/hg/~jfrancois/gspca/
>>>
>>> BTW, the newly installed modules still do not support VX-1000 webcam. :(
>>>  But the good news is that it worked when I installed the 2.6.30 kernel
>>> by pulling it from Karmic sources (see my other recent post on apt
>>> pinning and karmic in this list).
>>>
>>> The modules compile okay and are installed with:
>>> $> sudo make install
>>> from within the modules source directory.
>>>
>>> However, this modifies the kernel modules irreversibly, i.e., the
>>> following does not bring back the original kernel tree:
>>> $> sudo make rminstall
>>>
>> Why you just back up the /lib/modules/your_kernel/ directory before 
>> installing a self compiled module?
>> Then you can just copy the backup back and you are back to where you 
>> started.
> 
> 
> Yup, that is true. However, unfortunately I was not aware that rminstall
> won't just cleanly remove the manually installed modules. I cleared that
> up on gspca's irc channel and learned that gspca modules over write
> kernel's modules (not that kernel's module are any good, IMHO!).
> 
> Thanks for the tip though. This will make future experiments much more
> simpler.
> 
> Regards.
> 

A out of the kernel tree "install" can not handle all Linux distribution.

So, be always careful when you leave the package manager system of your 
distribution.

Thomas

PS: Usually, there is always a way to convert it back, but sometimes 
painful.