On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 08:57:54PM +0000, spiky wrote: > I have got kernel-3.8.3 all working now thks, I just wonder if I had > downloaded the patch from kernel.org for 3.8.2 if I would have been > better off that way. Hard to say, I'll try to explain and give you context -
In general, I download the first release of each kernel, and then use patch-x.y.z for those stable releases I think might be beneficial to me. Meantime, I test linus' -rc releases once things have settled down (occasionally -rc1, more typically -rc3 or -rc5 depending on what I notice on lkml) - this is so that I will have some confidence that a new version will work on my main desktops. It also means that at least once a year I have a problem with an -rc kernel : sometimes I have the time or urgent need to debug it (e.g. when using a new machine), other times I let it slide and hope someone else fixes it :) For my old single processor athlon64, now detuned to i686, I think this would have been one of those cases if I'd tried it on that machine - it has VIA hardware. But I suspect your problem is different. I'm used to trying to apply kernel patches, including some submitted but not yet included (I was doing that before I ever found BLFS and LFS), and in BLFS I often have to try to apply patches to fix breakage with newer releases. Sometimes, particularly with recent versions of patch, I get rejections even if it seems obvious to me that a hunk has merely moved - in those cases I use vim on whicheverfile, whicheverfile.orig, whicheverfile.rej [ if a rejection, those are the file - including any hunks which *did* apply, its original version, and the hunk(s) which weren't applied. Mostly I can fix up whicheverfile, and then get rid or .orig and .rej - I just use them in vim so that I can switch buffers to check and to copy. Whenever I get a "cannot find file to patch" (yes, I too get that fairly often, playing with upstream patches in BLFS packages) it usually means that either I'm not in the right directory, or else I'm using an inappropriate -pN option (some upstream patches and distro patches omit directories so that you have to be in a subdirectory to apply them). Sometimes recently, I've thought about directory organization and which -pN level I need, and still got it wrong - followed by a slapped head and "Doh!" when I understand my error. The more you apply patches, the better you should become at working out *how* to apply them. Experience helps in many other places too (if you can keep notes to refer to later). Keep working at it. ĸen -- das eine Mal als Tragödie, das andere Mal als Farce -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/blfs-support FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/faq.html Unsubscribe: See the above information page
