[wellylug] Kernel Compile

Ewen McNeill wellylug at ewen.mcneill.gen.nz
Tue Sep 2 22:11:16 NZST 2003


In message <1062493691.2317.14.camel at smokey>, Leslie Boardman writes:
>1.  Is there somehow a seperate /etc/modules file for each kernel or do
>I just have to be consistent with which are modules and which are
>compiled in?

Alas, you just have to be consistent about it.  It's okay to include
modules which don't exist in /etc/modules (so you can list all the ones
that you're going to need with any of your kernels) -- you'll just get a
"module X not found" type warning during the boot.  

Generally if I'm building my own kernels, I'll try to be consistent with
the things that are compiled in/compiled as modules to minimise this
hassle.

>2.  There are lots of options that are chipset specific (fixes etc).  Is
>there a good 'one stop site' or some method to work out which chipsets
>are in your machine or is it trial and error?

lspci.  And guess.

For a laptop (which you mentioned) there are two sites with "Linux
reports" for the laptop written by various people who have been through
this process already:

http://www.linux-laptop.net/
http://tuxmobil.org/

Look for your laptop model and see what they say is in there.  If your
model isn't there, look for similar models/models release around the
same time.  (I still don't know precisely what's in my Acer laptop, and
I've had it 18 months and spent a while looking -- in particular I'd
love to know what the bluetooth chip is, and how it's connected up.)

>3.  Is there any place where the config options for the precompiled
>debian kernels can be read?

less /boot/config-`uname -r`

Debian's kernel packages are wonderful for including this right in the
package.  (And I strongly recommend that you install "kernel-package"
and use "make-kpkg" when building kernels for a Debian system -- it
gives you an installable package with the kernel and all the other
things you expect in a Debian kernel package.  Very handy.)

>4. Am I right in thinking that when it all goes pear shaped all I have
>to do is boot off a rescue disk and edit lilo.conf to point back at my
>old kernel?

Generally if you use the Debian kernel packages (even if you build your
own -- see above), then you end up with "Linux" and "LinuxOLD" targets
in Lilo.  "Linux" is the most recently installed kernel, and "LinuxOLD"
is the next most recently installed kernel.  So you don't even need a
rescue disk -- just boot with "LinuxOLD" at the Lilo prompt, and you
should be able to fix things up and try again.  (But do keep your rescue
disks handy just in case.)

Finally if it's only the Alsa modules you're missing, why not install
alsa-source and just recompile the modules for the kernel you have?  I
can't remember how recent the alsa-source is in Woody, but you can
easily enough use the alsa-source deb from Unstable as it's got
basically no dependencies (it just installs the source tar file and some
helper scripts for building things).  You may need the bf2.4 kernel
headers, but you should be able to get those from a Debian archive near
you.

Ewen



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