[Techtalk] kernel upgrades

[Lee Blackwell]

Oh yes - I should add that my method of building kernels is just that - my
method.  Of course, there are many ways to do it, depending on your
skill/confidence level.

I do this Solaris/Linux for a living so maybe I just feel happy working as
root at the time (often when I'm building maintaining boxes)

I've not damaged anything.  Yet ;-)

Lee

-- 
Lee Blackwell
Unix Specialist, NCS, 3com IT.
"You're just jealous because the voices are talking to me."

On Thu, 11 Oct 2001, Mary Gardiner wrote:

>
> On Thu, Oct 11, 2001 at 08:52:42AM +0100, Lee Blackwell wrote:
> > [root at bella /usr/src]# tar zxvf /home/lee/linux-2.4.10.tar.gz .
> >
> > By default, kernel tarballs are stored in the 'linux' directory.  *This*
> > is why you unlink /usr/src/linux, because otherwise you'd overwrite your
> > original source tree (bad idea!)
>
> I find it is perfectly adequate to compile kernels in my home directory,
> but other people may have different systems for keeping their kernels in
> order.
>
> If you're compiling the kernel in a place your user has write access to,
> you don't need to be root. Only 'make modules_install', if you need that
> step, and copying the bzImage to the right place need to be done as
> root. As the README says, "do not take the name of root in vain".
>
> On that note, there are three things I would like to recommend to novice
> kernel builders:
>
> * In the source you untar, there will be a README file. Read it. Oh yes.
> * Be sure to rerun lilo.
> * As others have said, be sure to have a backup kernel.
>
> I compiled a new kernel the other day, and realised I hadn't built the
> DOS VFAT file system module, so I rebuilt the kernel and every time I
> booted it told me I had an invalid bzImage file. So I booted into an old
> kernel, recompiled, same thing. Third compile. Foruth compile. Realised I
> hadn't rerun lilo after the second build. Hence the error message. Reran
> lilo and all was fine.
>
> If I hadn't had an old kernel around to boot into that story would be
> more than "I stupidly wasted my time for an hour", it would be "I had to
> find a boot disk and ..."
>
> -Mary.
>
> --
> Mary Gardiner
> <mary at puzzling.org>
>
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