Kernel SRPM questions

[Andre Costa]

Hi,

I am used to configuring my own kernels, because I drop a lot of stuff I
don't really use. Lately, kernel-source RPMs have been deprecated in
favor of SRPMs. I do can build new versions from them, but there are a
couple of issues:

1. I generate kernel sources with

	rpmbuild --target i686 -bp kernel-2.6.spec

and then I move the resulting .../redhat/BUILD/kernel-2.6.9/linux-2.6.9
to /usr/src/linux , and then do 'make bzImage modules modules_install
install' (usually after a 'make oldconfig' using my own .config file).

Previous kernel sources appended version numbers (eg. -1.667) to kernel
"signature" (uname -r); current sources simply append "-prep" (this
happened both with 681 and 724 versions). IMHO this is bad because it
simply overrides any existing -prep version with the new one, demanding
some manual work to ensure a previous, bootable kernel still exists.

2. there's no support for 'athlon' architecture

I have an athlon-XP CPU, and if I plainly run 'rpmbuild -bp
kernel-2.6.spec' it barfs that athlon is not supported and bails out.
Browsing through spec file I couldn't indeed find specific support
for it. Any special reason for that?

I know I might be doing something wrong for not using rpm the whole way
trhough, but shouldn't the above procedure work? (I'd be more than glad
to do it provided I could use my own tweaked configure file) Any
relevant points I am missing?

TIA, and happy new year to everybody,

Andre

-- 
Andre Oliveira da Costa