Actually, I decided to go ahead and do the plan I had outlined, just for grins, while I was waiting on an answer. If it didn't work, and Frans said "yes, do that", I could then say it didn't work right away and save time. But it did work!
Here is what I did, as close as I can remember it. I was logged in as root. linux-image-2.6.26-1-s390 and linux-image-2.6.26-2-s390 are both installed at this point, linux-image-2.6.26-2-s390 is the default kernel image, and linux-image-2.6.26-1-s390 is the currently running kernel. kernel-package and all its prerequisites have previously been installed. aptitude install linux-source-2.6.26 aptitude clean cd /usr/src tar -xjf linux-source-2.6.26.tar.bz2 rm linux-source-2.6.26.tar.bz2 cd linux-source-2.6.26 cp -a /boot/config-2.6.26-2-s390 .config cd arch/s390/lib vi div64.c [change "alr %1,%2\n" to "ahi %1,1\n", file it] cd /boot aptitude purge linux-image-2.6.26-2-s390 linux-image-s390 ln -s vmlinuz-2.6.26-1-s390 vmlinuz ln -s initrd.img-2.6.26-1-s390 initrd.img rm initrd.img.old rm vmlinuz.old zipl cd /usr/src/linux-source-2.6.26 make menuconfig [Exit without making any configuration changes] make-kpkg clean make-kpkg --append-to-version -custom2-s390 --revision 1 --initrd kernel_image cd .. dpkg -i linux-image-2.6.26-custom2-s390_1_s390.deb [zipl is run during the installation of the package] rm linux-image-2.6.26-custom2-s390_1_s390.deb shutdown -r now;exit The machine shutdown and rebooted with linux-image-2.6.26-custom2-s390 as the running kernel. It came up perfectly! Wow! What a nasty bug! When the "divide" instruction doesn't work properly, anything can happen anywhere! I will continue to run this custom kernel image until there is an official Debian kernel image available which contains this fix. Please leave this bug report open until such is the case. And please get this fix into the official kernel ASAP!
