Master Kernel Thread

[dannyboy79]

well, I believe they use soemthing called git for their kernel development team. I have found it before wheere all the patches are but I can't seem to find it again but I have found the fiesty kernel tree. Here's a link to some part of the tree.

http://kernel.ubuntu.com/git?p=ubunt...u-2.6.20-15.26

good luck

[BrowneR]

thanks for that info!

looks like this is the patch i need: http://kernel.ubuntu.com/git?p=ubunt...1366dd78a12dff

i'm going to try merging that diff with my kernel source and see how i get on.

[BrowneR]

ok so that failed miserably - wont even compile now guess there are other alterations that need to be made.

this is a strange issue, is anyone else having similar trouble?

[dannyboy79]

well did you start with the vanilla kernel or did you use the ubuntu kernel source's to just update your config of the kernel? I also am not sure about patches or anything like that, I only pointed you to a link that stated, "Patches" and I in no way meant for you to use those as how do you know that those patches aren't already in the vanilla kernel? I wish I could be of more help here.

[BrowneR]

i started with the vanilla kernel source.

i thought the patch was worth a shot but i have a very limited understanding of source tree's/merging/commits/patching/cvs and the like so its no surprise it failed really.

think my next move is to just use the ubuntu source with my .config to make a lighter weight kernel.
either that or i'll try one of the latest 2.6.22 release candidates to see if the issue is still present.

thanks for your help dannyboy

[r_mano]

Before all: thanks for the thread! The mehod using

make-kpkg

works ok.

BUT:

the problem with this method is that everytime you rebuild a kernel, you have to do a

make-kpkg clean

, and that signify that you have to recompile all. If you use a generic .config, this could be 4 hours on my poor laptop. Now, if you have made little changes, it should be possible to recompile the kernel in a much more rapid fahion, with the

make ; make modules_install

method, and then manually install the new kernel.

My problems come at the moment of creating the initrd. Suppose I have compiled the kernel version 2.6.21.1-myk; after the abovementioned step I do

mkinitramfs 2.6.21.1-myk -o initrd.img

I then move al to the /boot director, run

/sbin/update-grub

, and...

...the new kernel boots ok, but then the boot process stops with a BusyBox in the initramfs.

Is there anyone that can help me to create, manually, the correct initrd to boot the system?


Thanks

[GaryH]

Hi Everybody,

Well my wireless is working just fine now; new kernel and all

I haven't gotten around to my modem yet. That's next.

So here's the skinny. When we change the kernel, we need to rebuild our restricted modules. Not all of them. Just the ones we need. I my case that was wireless and modem. Now to rebuild restricted modules we need their source, makefile, and lots and lots of other files too. Give yourself plenty of time to do this step. It is no small potato to find source, supporting files, and good instructions. Ubuntu is no help here. We're on our own. I found all the files and excellent instructions for my wireless at madwifi.org and for my modem at linmodems.org. I extracted the files from both tarballs into /usr/src. It wasn't difficult. From the instructions I copied, pasted, and executed three lines of code. Wireless just came up and started running right off the bat!

Hope this helps the community and if anybody wants more details on building the Atheros wireless module let me know and I'll write a detailed howto.

Now off to get the old modem working again. That's going to be a bear. I've still got more research to do. There's a brand new package out there for my modem called martian. The good news is it's kernel version independent. The bad news is it's still in the development phase. I'm tempted to try it anyway. Anybody out there know anything about martian?

Peace,
GaryH

[darkjedi664]

I'm pretty new to Linux and after some reading, I can tell the advantages of compiling a new kernel, but what about the disadvantages? Also, I tried compiling with k7smp (for my dual core Opteron), and it seemed to compile without incident. Is that a correct revision? I don't want to install it if it's not right. I mean, I didn't have any issues with compiling. Just a little scared to screw things up

[GaryH]

Hi darkjedi664,

I read somewhere in Ubuntu cyberspace a warning stating that rebuilding kernels, in almost all cases, should be left to kernel developers. I chose to disobey that warning because I'm a software engineer who enjoys tinkering with software and who enjoys web surfing for hours for answers to Linux questions.

The downside of customizing your kernel is complete destruction of your system and the upside is little to no speed improvement and disk savings which on a modern hard drive are insignificant.

I noticed no speed improvement with my custom Feisty kernel as compared to the generic Feisty kernel when running glxgears.

That's just MHO.

Peace,
GaryH

[dannyboy79]

I'm pretty new to Linux and after some reading, I can tell the advantages of compiling a new kernel, but what about the disadvantages? Also, I tried compiling with k7smp (for my dual core Opteron), and it seemed to compile without incident. Is that a correct revision? I don't want to install it if it's not right. I mean, I didn't have any issues with compiling. Just a little scared to screw things up

if you would have read the guide you would have saw that the revision has nothing to do with the kernel at all. It is merely a naming thing. You don't even have to add a revision but then you might not know which kernel is the one you just compiled. Also, as long you have another kernel option to boot to in your menu.lst, you can always boot to that so it wouldn't screw up your system, it would merely just maybe not boot using your newly compiled kernel. GO FOR IT!

I changed the capital letters because I realized that this is construed as yelling and not just trying to point something out. so if you're offended I aologize and in know way meant for that to be read as me yelling that. It's just that many people have asked this same question.