HOWTO: Kernel Compilation for Newbies

[tseliot]

Success!! Thanks man!

Any chance this will make a difference with the Nvidia problem?

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...=nvidia+reboot

I have no idea as I have never had such a problem. You should see it yourself.

Also, maybe not the appropriate place to ask, but do I need to reinstall the nvidia drivers? If I used your method 2 before, do I need to uninstall it again? If so, how? It doesn't show up in synaptic that I installed them.

Yes, you have to reinstall the nvidia drivers for every kernel you have. This means that you have to use Method2 for your new kernel.

[Asazuke]

Amazing! I never thought I'd be able to do something as intimidating as Compiling my Kernel. Thank you tseliot for another great HOWTO. Keep up the great work.

[tseliot]

Amazing! I never thought I'd be able to do something as intimidating as Compiling my Kernel. Thank you tseliot for another great HOWTO. Keep up the great work.

Thanks again and enjoy your new kernel

[Houman]

hi there;
thank youf or this great howto, i just had a small question;

after changing "ati" to "vesa" my resulotion is incorrect, what should i do :S

Also i understand that everytime a kernel chanegs the source for the ipw2200 driver has to be recompiled against the new kernel, but this means i wont be able to use my wireless connection in the old kernel right? is there a way to remedy this?

regards;
Houman

[Rob2687]

I never change it to vesa and it seems to work okay for me O_o

[Houman]

hi rob; (im from thornhill ontario, )

if i dont change the ati (which is in fact just the binary drivers that came with breezy) my custom kernel just hangs , i also tried fglrx binary drivers, same story,

I dont understand why binary drivers wont work for the custom kernel but work for the stock kernel,

also when i compiled my ipw2200 drivers for the stock kernel i couldnt use them in the custom kernel, so i removed them and did a compile against the custom kernel, and now i can use them both in the custom kernel and the stock kernel

Im very confused, if anyone can give me website or a tutorial or any links so i can read up on this stuff (modules and kernel compiles...) cuz its really confusing me

regards;

[tseliot]

hi there;
thank youf or this great howto, i just had a small question;

after changing "ati" to "vesa" my resulotion is incorrect, what should i do :S

Also i understand that everytime a kernel chanegs the source for the ipw2200 driver has to be recompiled against the new kernel, but this means i wont be able to use my wireless connection in the old kernel right? is there a way to remedy this?

regards;
Houman

1) I said to change the driver because you have to recompile the modules if you use a proprietary driver. In your case there's no need to change it to vesa. Stick to "ati".
EDIT: I've seen your latest post. I don't know why the "ati" (opensource) driver doesn't work. It depends on the xserver rather than on your kernel. It's weird and that driver (in theory and according to my experience) SHOULD work

2) You have to compile the modules (for ipw2200 in your case) for each kernel. This means that if you installed the drivers for your old kernel you will find them as they were if you boot in it. [Every kernel has its "modules" folder]
In other words YES, you will be able to use your wireless connection also in your old kernel.

[Houman]

Dear tseliot;

thank you so much for your response, things are a bit more clear now eventhough i still dont knwo whats the problem with the ati driver at least i can make sense of whats happening;

actually i used to run debian before and i did a cutom kernel and i played with my configs a little too much, (i used that old config file to compile myu new kernel) so its likely something is not working right because of a mistake i made in the drivers section or something of the sort;

its hard to see the errors i get because it hangs at boot and i cant even get to dmesg ;

thansk again for a great howto;

Houman

[tseliot]

Dear tseliot;

thank you so much for your response, things are a bit more clear now eventhough i still dont knwo whats the problem with the ati driver at least i can make sense of whats happening;

actually i used to run debian before and i did a cutom kernel and i played with my configs a little too much, (i used that old config file to compile myu new kernel) so its likely something is not working right because of a mistake i made in the drivers section or something of the sort;

its hard to see the errors i get because it hangs at boot and i cant even get to dmesg ;

thansk again for a great howto;

Houman

Thanks for appreciating my work.
Anyhow I don't recommend you to use the config file of a Debian kernel. I'm not saying that it won't work but I can't assure it will work properly.

[garba]

this is a very good guide tseliot, forgive me for being picky, but I can't understand why people keep doing this /usr/src/linux symlink thing... it's pointless, actually the reason behind doing it in the first place was unorthodox (you can find a famous post by torvalds about this)... besides, you can untar the kernel source package in your home dir and build it, there's no need to be root to compile a kernel, though I find it reasonable to keep the build in /usr/src for reference of course