Netconsole creates new functions suffixed by '_poll' in the network drivers. The problem is that both tg3 and b44 already define tg3_poll and b44_poll. The simplest solution is to rename _poll to _poll_nc in netconsole. The following sed transforms the original patch easily : # sed 's/^\(+.*\)\(_poll\)\([^a-zA-Z0-3_]\)/\1_poll_nc\3/g'