News Group Posts

Linux kernel how-to

From: Wayne Pollock <pollock@acm.org>
Subject: Re: RH7.1 -> 2.4.12
Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 03:50:53 -0400
References: <b170f2b4.0110142231.58545f30@posting.google.com> 

If you install the new kernel without wiping out the old one, you
can use the config files that RH used.  These can be found in the
old /usr/src/linux directory (which you should've renamed before
installing the new kernel source), in the subdirectory "configs".

I have details directions to build a kernel (2.4.9) on a RH system at:
        http://www.hcc.cc.fl.us/pollock/Unix/KernelRebuild.htm
(This is a new "HOW-TO" document since I didn't like the old one
much.  Feedback is welcome, as I'm trying to improve the document.)

Hope this helps!

-Wayne

"Chris." wrote:
> 
> Wondering if I did this right.  I'm relatively new to doing things
> within a RedHat framework; newly concerned with things like RPM
> manageability, I'm somewhat paranoid.  Any pointers or affirmations
> would be greatly appreciated.
> 
> I needed functionality from the newer 2.4.x kernel (specifically, USB
> support for my Clie), but RedHat only has 2.4.3-12 on their updates
> site.  So I downloaded and installed kernel-source-2.4.3-12.i386.rpm
> and then downloaded and untar'd linux-2.4.12.tar.gz from ftp.us.kernel.org
> (this was unpacked in /root to avoid confusion).  I then copied
> /usr/src/linux-2.4/configs/kernel-2.4.3-i686.config to /root/linux/.config
> and ran `make config` which used .config for its defaults.  I ran through
> the config hitting 'enter' for pretty much everything, hoping the kernel
> would be built more or less the way RedHat did so, with any additional
> features being set to reasonably sane defaults.
> 
> I ran the usual litany of 'make clean / dep / bzImage / modules /
> modules_install ', going back both to comment out CONFIG_SCSI_CPQFCTS=m
> (apparently Alan Cox is aware of the 'brokeness' of this piece, and I'll never
> need it), and also to edit drivers/parport/ieee1284_ops.c in accordance with
> other instructions, to eliminate two hard errors that caused the build process
> to fail.  (Should a 'production' kernel have errors of this nature?)
> 
> Having built the kernel, I copied cp arch/i386/boot/bzImage to vmlinuz-2.4.12
> in /boot and /boot_backup (different drives), built an initrd (I'm using
> dev_md in RAID1 for everything but the pair of /boot partitions), edited
> /etc/lilo.conf to create a new 'linux' image (renaming the default image
> 'linux-redhat') and ran `lilo`.
> 
> Hopefully, I have a system that isn't too "broken" as far as maintaining it
> with RPM once RedHat catches up with the kernel tree.
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> Thanks in advance!
 

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