Master Kernel Thread

[5-HT]

are there any significant differences if i'm building to 2.6.21 instead of 2.6.20?

Nope. 2.6.21 just adds some new features/options. You will be prompted for the desired action during menu/xconfig. The safe be would be to select the defaults if you are unsure. Hope it goes smoothly!

[etola]

hi,

I build my own kernel following this thread but I couldn't build the vesafb frame buffer.

I require this to have hi-res console at boot time after grub menu. I select vesa and vga related
frame buffers using xconfig but in the end I couldn't get vesafb.ko

any ideas ? comments ?

[madman91]

It is a great thread. But I do not feel much of a performance gain.... I followed the performance guide from xx owned xx .. but i do not feel much of that "speed" everyone talks about.... Nonetheless, compiling my kernel was a good experience and thank you both (op and xx owned xx) for the how to.

[fugitif]

Same here, except over 200MB. Any ideas?

The initrd is not to create. The modules thus take a too large size.

[MacUntu]

Nope. 2.6.21 just adds some new features/options. You will be prompted for the desired action during menu/xconfig. The safe be would be to select the defaults if you are unsure. Hope it goes smoothly!

IIRC the default for new features is "N(o)" - so that doesn't make much sense.
I'd suggest to read and google for everything. This way you'll get rid of what you don't need and make sure you don't throw something important over board.

Compiled 2.6.21 yesterday, same probs as you. 200+MB headers, 500+MB kernel?

[5-HT]

IIRC the default for new features is "N(o)" - so that doesn't make much sense.

You're right. Forgot about that, sorry. Curious to see what effects the tickless system will have on idle power consumption.

Compiled 2.6.21 yesterday, same probs as you. 200+MB headers, 500+MB kernel?

My kernel is 14 MB and my headers 7.8. I did gut initrd, any drivers and filesystems that I did not need, and all of the debug options.
Apart from going that route, disabling some of the obviously unneded support, based on your system, mentioned here may help bring those sizes down.

One note of caution to anyone trying to compile the nvidia module for 2.6.21: you may need to disable CPU paravirtualization support or the build will fail. Furthermore, if you will be using the 1.0.9755 drivers you may need to rename the module from nvidia.ko to nvidia_new.ko and do a

sudo depmode -a

[Tim T]

Perfect writeup! Installed w/o a hitch on 7.04 x64. I just had to reinstall the nvidia drivers like the writeup mentioned.

[Saubazi]

I tried 2.6.21 from feisty and no luck - it almost boots or probably does but I get plenty of errors
for device-mapper table 253.1 or something like that...just after LVM starts

Here for example:

Apr 27 19:24:56 ***** kernel: Inspecting /boot/System.map-2.6.21
Apr 27 19:24:56 ***** kernel: Loaded 25114 symbols from /boot/System.map-2.6.21.
Apr 27 19:24:56 ***** kernel: Symbols match kernel version 2.6.21.
Apr 27 19:24:56 ***** kernel: No module symbols loaded - kernel modules not enab
led.
Apr 27 19:24:56 ***** kernel: inear: Device lookup failed
Apr 27 19:24:56 ***** kernel: [ 72.397106] device-mapper: ioctl: error adding
target to table
Apr 27 19:24:56 ***** kernel: [ 72.646848] device-mapper: table: 254:1: linear
: dm-linear: Device lookup failed
Apr 27 19:24:56 ***** kernel: [ 72.646854] device-mapper: ioctl: error adding
target to table
Apr 27 19:24:56 ***** kernel: [ 72.647623] device-mapper: table: 254:1: linear
: dm-linear: Device lookup failed
Apr 27 19:24:56 ***** kernel: [ 72.647628] device-mapper: ioctl: error adding
target to table
Apr 27 19:24:56 ***** kernel: [ 72.648376] device-mapper: table: 254:1: linear
: dm-linear: Device lookup failed
Apr 27 19:24:56 ***** kernel: [ 72.648380] device-mapper: ioctl: error adding
target to table
Apr 27 19:24:56 ***** kernel: [ 72.649133] device-mapper: table: 254:1: linear
: dm-linear: Device lookup failed
Apr 27 19:24:56 ***** kernel: [ 72.649138] device-mapper: ioctl: error adding
target to table
Apr 27 19:24:56 ***** kernel: [ 72.649881] device-mapper: table: 254:1: linear
: dm-linear: Device lookup failed

Never had so much stress compiling a kernel in Gentoo...

[MacUntu]

I got the same error. How large is your kernel image? (Search for linux-image-2.6.21 in synaptic)

I've compiled three times now following three "different" how-tos (basically all the same). I got no errors during the compilation and ended up with two .debs: the image with ~200MB (installed ~500MB) and the headers with ~17MB (installed ~60MB). One thing's for sure: that's not normal.

[Saubazi]

You mean mine?

-rw-r--r-- 1 root src 8082542 2007-04-27 22:28 linux-headers-2.6.21_2.6.21-10.00.Custom_amd64.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 root src 175809208 2007-04-27 22:26 linux-image-2.6.21_2.6.21-10.00.Custom_amd64.deb

What you have sounds odd at least...