kernel reconfigure

[James Wilkinson]

yah hoo wrote:
> newbie kernel compile
> 
> what I'm trying to do-
> reconfigure kernel for home pc
> 
> what I've done so far-
> googled and fedora archived for relevant instructions
> 
> I know abou the commands
> Make menuconfig; xconfig; gconfig; oldconfig. I know
> about redirecting output to a 'build' directory: (make
> 0=output/dir...) as I have read docs. and RH9 Bible by
> Negus. + postings, - but none of this jives together.
> 
> But what should I do before the above commands?

First you need to grab a copy of the Linux source code. Either download
a Linus version from a mirror of kernel.org, or install a kernel-source
RPM or a kernel RPM.

Which is up to you. I tend to stick to Linus' kernels: if you do that,
cd somewhere where you want to build it, and run
tar jxvf /path/to/linux-2.6.n.tar.bz2
or
tar zxvf /path/to/linux-2.6.n.tar.gz
(depending on what you've downloaded). Then cd into the directory that's
just been created.

If you've installed an RPM, then cd to /usr/src/linux-2.6.*.

Then run ONE of the make commands. Since you're doing this to learn, I'd
recommend
make xconfig
or
make gconfig
since they give you the easiest access to help files, but you get to make
all the choices.

As always, case is important.

It's not that hard: chances are you'll miss something, or you'll want to
tweak your choices, so expect to have two or three goes for the first few
kernels you compile. But the build system makes it difficult to make too
many mistakes, apart from the obvious ones like forgetting to compile
support for your hard disk adapter or ext3.

Good luck!

James.
-- 
E-mail address: james@ | "Minis on the other hand are just the wrong size. Too
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