[Courses][Linux comands] customizing a 2.4 kernel

[Christine Bussman]

Just a suggestion, if you build your own kernel frequently, don't run make 
mrproper unless you have problems, that way if you need to recompile because 
you just added new hardware (a tvtuner card for example) you can leave all 
the options the same except for the option or options for that hardware.  
This makes troubleshooting much easier because you know what you changed.  I 
compile a kernel at least once a month and have never had to run this 
command, though I do run make clean (my understanding is that this removes 
all the intermediary files, though it leaves your actual config file so that 
it will be reread next time, while mrproper even removes the config files).

If you're not sure what options to include in your kernel, the command lsmod 
will show you what modules have been loaded in your system right now, which 
might help you decide what options you need to select for your hardware.

One more note:  some distributions (for example Gentoo) require you to be root 
before you can even run make menuconfig.

A few more reasons to compile your own kernel:
-some distributions require you to (gentoo does this, although there is a new 
tool that compiles a custom kernel for you, I haven't looked into this 
because it really isn't a big deal to compile one yourself)
-it's helpful to be able to choose what I want built into the kernel as a 
module and what I want built in

Christine