How are fedora kernels modified from vanilla kernels

[Alexander Dalloz]

Am Di, den 26.10.2004 schrieb John DeDourek um 18:29:

> This sounds like a real step backwards in the usability of
> Fedora for those of us who don't do kernel development
> but just need to gen a custom kernel due to a required
> change to the .config.  (In my case to get SCSI multi
> lun support so that my multi-type flash card reader
> can read on all three ports.)

Sorry if I misexpressed myself. It was not my intention to say, that to
build a custom kernel you need to go that route. As usual there a
different ways to get a custom kernel and people certainly will prefer
one over the other. If I feel the need to change the default Fedora
kernel a bit - like you say activating the SCSI LUN support - I prefer
to modify the kernel SRC.RPM. In this example the changes are not big.
If you like to change the kernel a lot, then it is much simpler for the
common user to have the kernel source tree deflated and to run the usual
kernel config and compile steps manually.
Back to your SCSI LUN support example. This case is simple as you will
only need to add a 3 liner to the spec file:

for file in *.config; do
	echo "CONFIG_SCSI_MULTI_LUN=m" >> $file
done

This is all to change and the rpmbuild process will then create a kernel RPM for you
which is very close to the original Fedora kernel RPM, just with additional SCSI LUN
support (you know that LUN support _might_ bring you trouble? for that reason it is
not activated).

> Is there a HOW-TO for non-kernel developers on how to
> build a custom kernel?  Requirements are:
> -- use the configuration of the running kernel
> -- run menu-config or whatever to make a change
> -- make a new kernel as whatever-custom
> -- install the new kernel for grub booting as an alternate kernel

If you are speaking about building a custom kernel the "usual" way, all
steps are explained in the kernel documentation README file in the
source. If you mean what I poorly explained above for customizing the
kernel RPM building, then I fear there is no trivial howto.

> John DeDourek

Alexander


-- 
Alexander Dalloz | Enger, Germany | GPG key 1024D/ED695653 1999-07-13
Fedora GNU/Linux Core 2 (Tettnang) kernel 2.6.8-1.521smp 
Serendipity 18:47:36 up 6 days, 15:27, load average: 0.12, 0.16, 0.20 
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