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[2.6.19] AMD64 kernelpackage build



Hi group

Not sure this is the right place to post this. If not, I do apologize and am gladly referred to the correct list. Thank you!

First a brief introduction. I am Vincent Wesstein, a 34 yr professional locomotive engineer (train driver) in the Netherlands. My first contact with Linux was Caldera (remember that? ;-)) but it never run anywhere near smooth on my hardware then. Gave RH 8 a try, upgraded to RH 9, then Suse 8.0 before settling on Debian in the very last days of Woody. In Nov 2005 I finally gave up on "that other OS from Redmond" after it's latest BSOD and since then working on Sarge. Never looked back ;-)

Anyway, I have a AMD64 AM2-based server at home, build in June this year. Installed Sarge with great difficulty and had to use an unofficial install CD from a Mr. Sorensen (kernel 2.6.8 is really too old nowadays... his 2.6.12 kernel did work, partially) Last week I've re-installed that server with Etch. Now I can use the onboard NIC properly for the first time... :-\ Having compiled and build several kernels from source I've decided to try it the Debian way with make-kpkg on the 2.6.19 kernel. That worked remarkably well for a first-timer :-)

For those interested I have the .deb package available, along with the .config file, the output of the make-kpkg command (nice, those >> redirectors ;-)) and 2 files on the hardware of the system used to build the package. As the .deb is ~16 MB and the make-kpkg file another 600+ kB it's obviously not suited for those on a dail-up connection...

I do have a few questions though: I've build the package with the --initrd option, but the initrd.img is not packaged. Is that created automagicaly when installing the package (which I didn't do yet: too chicken ;-)) or does that need to be done by hand post-install? When configuring the kernel I wanted to have it ready for the 2 GB RAM I've installed, but I couldn't find any option in make menuconfig referring to this feature (HIGHMEM, BIGMEM). Does the kernel comes with >1GB support enabled by default or do I have to re-build?

As you've deducted from the above lines, I only have an AMD64 package. If some kind soul instructs me on how to cross-compile I'll gladly have the machine chewing away on other architectures as well. (no security risk, as the machine isn't completely configured yet my router keeps it invisible from the big bad Internet ;-P You also understand now why putting it on my server isn't an option... ;-)) I have a Gmail account available, which will be used to send you the requested files.

If you've read this far, thanks for your patience!

Regards, Vincent Wesstein
the Netherlands



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