On Thu, 10 Jul 2003 12:00:56 +1200
Matthew Gregan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 10, 2003 at 11:38:23AM +1200, Nick Rout wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, 10 Jul 2003 11:20:36 +1200
> > Christopher Sawtell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> > > Greets Folks.
> > > 
> > >   Just a quick reminder that the OSTC is offering a single Lesson in 
> > > 'Compiling your Linux Kernel'. We had several people at the Gentoo mini 'fest 
> > > who said that they were interested. Please make yourselves known by either 
> > > registering on the http://ostc.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=28 web site or 
> > > replying to this email.
> 
> > at the risk of being facetious, what is the problem with 
> 
> At the risk of being pedantic...  Here's five problems in no particular
> order.

I consider myself smacked on the hand :-). To be fair I have only ever
compiled the kernel on x86 and usually do it as root so i can do it in
one line and walk away.

> 
> > make dep && make clean bzImage modules modules_install
> 
> 1.  No need for 'make dep' in recent (2.5.x) kernels.

didn't know that, I am still in 2.4.20 land

> 2.  'make clean' does not clean up everything, which usually results in
>     compile failures when changing certain configuration
>     options--particularlly when moving between SMP and Uniprocessor
>     kernels.

you can, of course make mrproper, but I have only ever had to  do that
once. you NEED to back up .config as I think mrproper cleans it out.

> 3.  The above line assumes the kernel and modules are built as root.
>     This is needless.  You should build the kernel and modules under a
>     non-privileged user and use root _only_ to install the kernel and
>     modules.

I use root because its what I know and what the gentoo install
instructions told me to do (you do install gentoo as root for obvious
reasons). Is there any problem other than the usual paranoia in
compiling the kernel as root?

> 4.  The above line does not account for installing the kernel into
>     /boot, nor updating GRUB/LILO.

for a grub system all you need to do in most situations is back up the
existing kernel and copy your new one on top. If you want to choose
kernel versions from the bootup screen then there is more to do. lilo
requires more, but as we have cvered that recently onlist i won't repeat
it.

> 5.  'bzImage' is not a valid make target for all architectures.
> 

I assumed x86

> I can come up with more problems, if you like.
> 

thanks for the lesson. I still think most people will want to
concentrate on what they need to configure in and out to make it work
for their machine :-)


> Cheers,
> -mjg
> -- 
> Matthew Gregan                     |/
>                                   /|                [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 

--
Nick Rout
Barrister & Solicitor
Christchurch, NZ
Ph +64 3 3798966
Fax + 64 3 3798853
http://www.rout.co.nz
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

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