Getting actual source for a kernel

[Rick Stevens]

Bill Davidsen wrote:
> Please read this entire question before giving me the obvious answer...
> 
> Is there any way to get the actual source to the binary kernels 
> available? What koji has as source is the kernel.org source, STABLE 
> patch, and dozens of patches with no way to tell which are applied to 
> any given binary kernel before it's built, and in what order.
> 
> I poked about on koji trying to find the list of patches in order, but 
> had no success.
> Example:
>   Binary    kernel-PAE-2.6.27.7-53.fc9.i686.rpm
>   Source    kernel-2.6.27.7-53.fc9.src.rpm
> 
> Is there some way to get the list of patches needed to build this 
> kernel? I sure couldn't find any way to get a clean application of even 
> the ext4 patch sets, so I could do some testing.
> 
> Is this information deliberately restricted or just never made available?

The best bet is to download and install the Fedora-specific kernel
source RPM.  Have a good look at the /usr/src/redhat/SPECS/kernel.spec
file.  In it will be listed the various patches made to the baseline
kernel source required for that build (specifically, look for lines
that begin "PatchXXXX" where "XXXX" is a decimal number).

Remember, the spec file is what guides rpmbuild to create the actual
source tree in your /usr/src/redhat/BUILD directory.
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- Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer                      ricks at nerd.com -
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