Building kernels the Debian way
 

On 2008-12-08 23:01 +0100, Jochen Schulz wrote:

> Sven Joachim:
>> Finally, some good advice. But before this step, you need to copy your
>> old config to linux-2.6.22.1/.config and cd to the kernel directory.
>
> The copy should be unnecessary as long as the current config is
> available from /proc/config.gz.

"As long as it available", but is it? I thought the Debian kernels are
built without CONFIG_IKCONFIG_PROC because that wastes some memory and
the config is always available from /boot/config-$(uname-r).

> Either way, I suggest to go through the hassle to start with a minimal
> configuration and only enable those options you need now (or which you
> think you may need later). This has two main benefits: kernel compile
> time drops *significantly* and you don't need to mess with initrds.

And has the additional benefit that you learn a lot the hard way by
building kernels that fail to boot or lack important features. In this
case, however, it is best not to bother with make-kpkg at all; the
"make && make install && make modules_install" triplet will save a lot
of time on subsequent compilations.

Sven


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Building kernels the Debian way
 

On Mon, 08 Dec 2008 23:45:08 +0100
Sven Joachim <svenjoac@gmx.de> wrote:

> On 2008-12-08 23:01 +0100, Jochen Schulz wrote:
>
> > Sven Joachim:
> >> Finally, some good advice. But before this step, you need to copy your
> >> old config to linux-2.6.22.1/.config and cd to the kernel directory.
> >
> > The copy should be unnecessary as long as the current config is
> > available from /proc/config.gz.
>
> "As long as it available", but is it? I thought the Debian kernels are
> built without CONFIG_IKCONFIG_PROC because that wastes some memory and
> the config is always available from /boot/config-$(uname-r).
>

You have the config in /boot/config-<kernel version>
That way it doesn't take memory.

> > Either way, I suggest to go through the hassle to start with a minimal
> > configuration and only enable those options you need now (or which you
> > think you may need later). This has two main benefits: kernel compile
> > time drops *significantly* and you don't need to mess with initrds.
>
> And has the additional benefit that you learn a lot the hard way by
> building kernels that fail to boot or lack important features. In this
> case, however, it is best not to bother with make-kpkg at all; the
> "make && make install && make modules_install" triplet will save a lot
> of time on subsequent compilations.
>

make-kpkg doesn't rebuild everything, just the same as make. If you want to
change the version number you can just remove the debian directory and do
make-kpkg again with a different --revision

> Sven
>
>


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Building kernels the Debian way
 

On 2008-12-09 20:02 +0100, lee wrote:

> On Mon, Dec 08, 2008 at 10:22:51PM +0100, Sven Joachim wrote:
>>
>> > Create new default link to new source code
>>
>> This is absolutely unnecessary and maybe even harmful. Read the README
>> in the Linux kernel tree why you should not do it.
>
> The NVIDIA driver doesn't install when it wants to compile a kernel
> module and you don't have the source in the default location.

Well, in the Debian package you are supposed to set MODULE_LOC if you
are not building the module in /usr/src. Doesn't that work with
make-kpkg?

> "
> Do NOT use the /usr/src/linux area! This area has a (usually
> incomplete) set of kernel headers that are used by the library header
> files. They should match the library, and not get messed up by
> whatever the kernel-du-jour happens to be.
> "
>
>
> Who or what puts header files into /user/src/linux? It didn't exist
> before I created it.

Nobody, hopefully. But some mad people (and old distributions!) create
symlinks from /usr/include to /usr/src/linux/include. That way lies
madness, see e.g. http://linuxgazette.net/issue62/tag/4.html.

Sven


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