Re: [gentoo-user] Re: kernel build - back in the soup.
On Sun, Nov 8, 2009 at 08:45, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: daid kahl wrote: I tried closely comparing the current working kernel with newly built one. I mean side by side with `make menuconfig' running in both sources. I cannot tell what it is I'm overlooking. Please do not do this. Instead emerge kccmp to compare kernel configurations! It is much easier...trust me, I tried brute-force as well! Thanks for the tip... that tool does look useful. At least for kernel comparison I think it might beat the poop out of the ediff mode in emacs. Although the emacs tools are better in general. I managed to get the kernel figured out... (with plenty of help here) but I think I'll tinker with kccmp, see how it works, and be ready for next time. It's really easy. You just run it with two configuration files as inputs, and it gives a nice X display with different settings, and then settings that are only in one config or the other (resulting from different kernel versions or sub-config options). Answering a dozen or so questions on the cmdline beats the poop out of flopping around in menuconfig, or even worse, 2 instances of menuconfig. What is really maddening is that I once knew how to do the stuff with .config and `make oldconfig'. Here lately I seem to forget things I once knew if I don't use the knowledge for a mnth or two. I always do it from the command line with a web-browser searching http://cateee.net/ for any config I don't know what it is. ~daid Sounds like he may as well use that genkernel thingy that Gentoo has. It never has worked for me but he may have better luck. It may even work on the first try. LOL I've been using genkernel for 4+ years, of course had some problema along the way, nothing that couldn't be handle. I find it really easy to use. Yeah, it worked first time, some tweaking later and BANG! It was perfect! -- Daniel da Veiga
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: kernel build - back in the soup.
Daniel da Veiga wrote: On Sun, Nov 8, 2009 at 08:45, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: daid kahl wrote: Sounds like he may as well use that genkernel thingy that Gentoo has. It never has worked for me but he may have better luck. It may even work on the first try. LOL I've been using genkernel for 4+ years, of course had some problema along the way, nothing that couldn't be handle. I find it really easy to use. Yeah, it worked first time, some tweaking later and BANG! It was perfect! I tried that thing several times in its early days, it never made a kernel that would even boot up. I did better doing mine by hand. I have not tried it recently so I am sure it has improved a lot by now. It may build a mighty fine kernel now but I can do the same thing with oldconfig and know for sure what I am getting. Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: kernel build - back in the soup.
I tried closely comparing the current working kernel with newly built one. I mean side by side with `make menuconfig' running in both sources. I cannot tell what it is I'm overlooking. Please do not do this. Instead emerge kccmp to compare kernel configurations! It is much easier...trust me, I tried brute-force as well! Thanks for the tip... that tool does look useful. At least for kernel comparison I think it might beat the poop out of the ediff mode in emacs. Although the emacs tools are better in general. I managed to get the kernel figured out... (with plenty of help here) but I think I'll tinker with kccmp, see how it works, and be ready for next time. It's really easy. You just run it with two configuration files as inputs, and it gives a nice X display with different settings, and then settings that are only in one config or the other (resulting from different kernel versions or sub-config options). Answering a dozen or so questions on the cmdline beats the poop out of flopping around in menuconfig, or even worse, 2 instances of menuconfig. What is really maddening is that I once knew how to do the stuff with .config and `make oldconfig'. Here lately I seem to forget things I once knew if I don't use the knowledge for a mnth or two. I always do it from the command line with a web-browser searching http://cateee.net/ for any config I don't know what it is. ~daid
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: kernel build - back in the soup.
daid kahl wrote: I tried closely comparing the current working kernel with newly built one. I mean side by side with `make menuconfig' running in both sources. I cannot tell what it is I'm overlooking. Please do not do this. Instead emerge kccmp to compare kernel configurations! It is much easier...trust me, I tried brute-force as well! Thanks for the tip... that tool does look useful. At least for kernel comparison I think it might beat the poop out of the ediff mode in emacs. Although the emacs tools are better in general. I managed to get the kernel figured out... (with plenty of help here) but I think I'll tinker with kccmp, see how it works, and be ready for next time. It's really easy. You just run it with two configuration files as inputs, and it gives a nice X display with different settings, and then settings that are only in one config or the other (resulting from different kernel versions or sub-config options). Answering a dozen or so questions on the cmdline beats the poop out of flopping around in menuconfig, or even worse, 2 instances of menuconfig. What is really maddening is that I once knew how to do the stuff with .config and `make oldconfig'. Here lately I seem to forget things I once knew if I don't use the knowledge for a mnth or two. I always do it from the command line with a web-browser searching http://cateee.net/ for any config I don't know what it is. ~daid Sounds like he may as well use that genkernel thingy that Gentoo has. It never has worked for me but he may have better luck. It may even work on the first try. LOL Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: kernel build - back in the soup.
On 11/3/2009 11:10 PM, Harry Putnam wrote: hamiltonhamil...@pobox.com writes: Just checking - but you didn't mention: did you copy the .config to the new kernel src directory? If not, that would certainly explain the disparity in configuration settings you're seeing. I think you can say make `oldconfig' and the `old config' is supposed to be incorporated so no I didn't If I had put .confg into the new sources, then plain make menuconfig is what I would have used. Do you know where the man pages or docs for that stuff is .. its not in `man make' The 'make' man page wouldn't know anything about the kernel's makefile. You want the README file that's included in the top of the kernel source folder. That file says, among other things: make oldconfig Default all questions based on the contents of your existing ./.config file and asking about new config symbols. You need to already have a .config file in the source tree in order for 'make oldconfig' to work; otherwise you are going to get the default answers to just about every question. The benefit of this is that you don't have to search through the entire menu tree in the UI to find what's new. When you're ready to build a new kernel version, you should copy the .config file from your current kernel into the new source tree. For example, if you use 'make install' it will copy .config to /boot/config-kernel version; from there you can copy it back to /usr/src/linux/.config for the next version. When you run 'oldconfig' you should rarely get more than a few dozen questions, and it should all be on truly new items that didn't exist in your previous kernel. The hardware drivers you selected should all carry over as-is. --Mike
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: kernel build - back in the soup.
Am Mittwoch 04 November 2009 02:46:54 schrieb Harry Putnam: But am I missing some critical driver? Harddisk (CONFIG_BLK_DEV_SD=y), maybe? That's one reason for unknown block device. Bye... Dirk signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: kernel build - back in the soup.
Am Mittwoch 04 November 2009 05:10:52 schrieb Harry Putnam: I think you can say make `oldconfig' and the `old config' is supposed to be incorporated so no I didn't No, that's only half of the truth. You need to copy .config from your old kernel first. I'd compile the config into the kernel, so that you can access it from the running kernel any time, via /proc/config(.gz). If I had put .confg into the new sources, then plain make menuconfig is what I would have used. This is how I do it since years. Works fine. Never used oldconfig. Do you know where the man pages or docs for that stuff is .. its not in `man make' But in make help when you are in the kernel source directory. HTH... Dirk signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: kernel build - back in the soup.
Harry Putnam wrote: I think you can say make `oldconfig' and the `old config' is supposed to be incorporated so no I didn't The 'oldconfig' option needs your old .config for input (that where old comes from :-) I usually manually go through the 'make menuconfig' as well after doing this to see if there's anything I want to change, new options that may be useful or read up on (help text for the various options usually give you a nice hint)... Do you know where the man pages or docs for that stuff is .. its not in `man make' Make is a general build tool and not specific to the kernel. The option 'oldconfig' and friends are defined in the Makefile in the /linux directory... Best regards Peter K
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: kernel build - back in the soup.
Harry Putnam wrote: John H. Moe john...@optusnet.com.au writes: I stopped using that option in my systems, as there is now a AHCI SATA option to use instead. It appears CONFIG_ATA_SFF (which CONFIG_ATA_PIIX requires) is deprecated. From the help on it: Do you notice some kind of difference from switching? Well, my understanding is that SATA controllers can operate in one of two modes: AHCI (or native) mode, which allows for the full capabilities (read: SPEED) of the SATA interface, and an IDE-compatible mode, for things like Windows XP (which I use at work) that doesn't, by default, understand SATA. If you try to load WinXP on to a PC with SATA, you either have to switch the SATA controller to IDE-mode, which allows WinXP to see it as a normal IDE hard drive, or load a SATA driver at install time (from a floppy! One of the few things I still need 3.5 floppies for). Translating this to Linux (at home), I chose the AHCI option when it showed up in one kernel upgrade, and when I saw in the help for ATA_SFF that it's the legacy IDE interface, I figured I didn't need it, so I left it out. So if I understand this correctly, you should use the AHCI option if your SATA controller is in AHCI or Native mode, and the ATA_SFF option if you're in IDE or Compatible mode. Hope this helps (and makes sense) John Moe
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: kernel build - back in the soup.
Harry Putnam wrote: hamilton hamil...@pobox.com writes: On Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:02:18 -0800, walt w41...@gmail.com wrote: On 11/03/2009 02:29 PM, Harry Putnam wrote: I'll say right from the start, that building a new kernel, has always been a problem for me. I don't remember ever not having a problem, in 10+ yrs.. Many people here seem to find it completely easy... not me. So I'm back in the soup. [I hope what I try to layout below is not overly confusing] (After install of gentoo-sources-2.6.31-r4) Just checking - but you didn't mention: did you copy the .config to the new kernel src directory? If not, that would certainly explain the disparity in configuration settings you're seeing. I think you can say make `oldconfig' and the `old config' is supposed to be incorporated so no I didn't If I had put .confg into the new sources, then plain make menuconfig is what I would have used. Do you know where the man pages or docs for that stuff is .. its not in `man make' I'd like to check some of that. I always do this: cp /path/to/old/kernel/.config /path/to/new/kernel/.config . Then run make oldconfig and configure all the new stuff. I usually answer no to everything but there is exceptions. After that, make all make modules_install and either run make install or copy it the old fashioned way. Then edit grub if needed and reboot. Do all that in /usr/src/linux especially the make parts. It has worked for me for quite a while. I do have a hiccup every once in a while but usually something else is wrong. Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: kernel build - back in the soup.
Harry Putnam rea...@newsguy.com writes: I think you can say make `oldconfig' and the `old config' is supposed to be incorporated so no I didn't If I had put .confg into the new sources, then plain make menuconfig is what I would have used. That is the wrong way round! make oldconfig uses the .config in the kernel directory, which in the case of an upgrade is the *default* (ie without any customisations) config. make oldconfig does *not* operate on the running kernel. You have to copy the .config from the running (old) kernel to the new kernel directory before running make oldconfig. If you start with the default config, then you have to run make menuconfig (or config or xconfig) to customise it every time.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: kernel build - back in the soup.
On Wednesday 04 November 2009 03:46:54 Harry Putnam wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann volkerar...@googlemail.com writes: your drivers for the ide disks have to be built INTO THE KERNEL! NOT MODULES. Is that really a hard rule? I've done it both ways successfully in the past. If you do not use an initrd|initramfs, then the drivers for the chipset and the filesystem on / do need to be built into the kernel. The drivers are on the disk and the kernel needs to read the drivers from the disk to read the disk to get the drivers :-) chicken and egg. If you use an initrd/initramfs or have genkernel make one for you, then the drivers are on that ramdisk and the kernel can see and load them so all is well. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
