Kernels in a package-managed world. was: Re: [H-GEN] SMP & ipfwadm

[The Fuzzy One]

On Wed, 19 Aug 1998, bofh wrote:

> A kernel is a kernel is a kernel !!!!!
> the kernel is distribution independant, just get the source tree, un tar it
> and compile it

This isn't always the correct solution.  Since both debian and redhat use
packages for their binary kernel distributions, you really have three
options:

1)	Use the binary distrubtion
2)	Package your binary kernel properly
3)	Make your kernel exempt from packaging concerns

Since I only really have experience with Debian, I can only comment on
that...

1)	For 2.1 kernels, there is no binary package on questnet that I can
	see... only images for 2.0.33 and 2.0.34 in hamm [0].
	It may be a better solution to use one of these kernel packages if
	they have the features you need, since security/usability patches
	can be automatically applied with the old apt-get dist-upgrade.
	There are cases where this is a problem, such as on my laptop
	"lillian", and in the case of SMP described earlier in the thread.
	I use this method for fuzzy, my 486.

2)	Debian comes with a set of tools to automatically package kernels
	from source code, called kernel-package[1].  I've played with them
	a few times half-heartedly, but since it can take me a few hours
	to compile a kernel, and I've had only failures with this
	technique I gave up pretty quickly.

3)	By removing the kernel-* packages, and unpacking the source
	BSD/Slackware-style, you can get a very good solution.  It takes
	a little extra effort on your part, but it gives you that nice,
	clean kernel of whichever version you like.  It's relatively
	painless.  See the kernel-HOWTO[2] for an introduction to this.
	Make sure you do remove all packages for the kernel, or you could
	wake up with unpleasantness after a dist-upgrade kills your custom
	build.
	I use this method for lillian's special needs.

[0]
http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/linux/debian/dists/hamm/hamm/binary-i386/base/
kernel-image-*

[1]
Package: kernel-package
Priority: optional
Section: misc
Installed-Size: 154
Maintainer: Manoj Srivastava <srivasta at debian.org>
Architecture: all
Version: 3.28
Depends: perl (>= 5.002-8), dpkg (>= 1.4), dpkg-dev
Recommends: libc-dev, gcc
Suggests: kernel-source
Size: 51508
Description: Debian Linux kernel package build scripts.
 This package provides the capability to create a debian
 kernel-image package by just running make-kpkg kernel_image in a
 kernel source directory tree.  It can also build the kernel source
 package as a debian file, the kernel headers package. In general, this
 package is very useful if you need to create a custom kernel, if, for
 example, the default kernel does not support some of your hardware, or
 you wish a leaner, meaner kernel.
 .
 If you are running on an intel x86 platform, and you wish to compile a
 custom kernel (why else are you considering this package?), then you may
 need the package bin86 as well.  (This is not required on other
platforms).

[2] 
http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/linux/sunsite.unc.edu/docs/HOWTO/Kernel-HOWTO

        fuzzy B.Sc.

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