Re: [opensuse] Kernel Building Resources & Recommendations


Randall R Schulz wrote:
[...]

It did not seem to lead me totally astray. I went with the suggestion of
creating an RPM (because I was using one computer to do the build but
the result was intended primarily for my friend's computer). This is
where things fell down, probably because I don't know enough about how
kernel RPMs work, what happens when they're installed. How the source
RPM is fabricated (in particular, why I can have more than one kernel
but apparently only one set of kernel sources installed at any one
time).

A "make rpm" creates (AFAIK) only a very basic RPM package. If you
really need to build a proper RPM package for your SuSE system, then
I recommend using the SuSE Kernel Source src.rpm and making changes therein.

If you know of better resources for newbie kernel builders, I'd love to
hear about them.

I wrote a kernel howto (actually this project started in 2002) which I
think is well known among German-speaking Linux users - I get quite a
lot of positive feedback. However, since it's written in German it might
not be particularly helpful for you...

[...some suggestions...]

I think it's too minimal for practical purposes, especially if you want
to transport the new kernel to another system.

True. I thought you only wanted to change your local machine.

[...]
When I ran menuconfig I gave the configuration a variant name, but
somehow I still didn't get a new build directory.

I think this is something different. A build directory is where you
build the actual object files, modules, etc. and the final kernel image.
In principle, /usr/src/linux-obj (or a subdirectory, respectively) is
such a build directory - when using a build directory, you separate all
the files created during a build from the source tree (the kernel source
tree is always a clean tree). If I understood you correctly, then you
wanted to give your new kernel a unique kernel release (which in general
is a good idea when compiling your own kernel). This would translate
into a new /lib/modules/ subdirectory. Did you mean such a directory? Or
really a build directory?

From the info I've seen so far, it's difficult to say what might be
wrong with your approach and why the vmware script fails on the other
machine. I think, there are several approaches to tackle the problem:
a) build your own complete kernel with USB_DEVICEFS enabled (via "make
rpm" etc.)
b) build your own complete kernel via src.rpm (default config adjusted)
c) only build a new usbcore.ko module for the standard SuSE kernel,
copy it or package it as RPM, and install it on the other machine(s)
d) ...

From my point of view, c) might be the quickest and easiest solution as
it does not require to install a complete new kernel, kernel sources,
etc. on the other machine (remember, if you install a completely new
kernel, you or the RPM package also need to take care of the initrd,
bootloader configuration, etc.). You would only replace a single kernel
module in the SuSE standard installation. However, it seems as if you've
already managed to install and boot a new kernel and it's now only the
vmware part that's going wrong. Correct?

Cheers, Th.



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Relevant Pages

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