openvz 2.6.8

[John Kelly <jak@isp2dial.com>]

I'm trying to merge the openvz 2.6.8 patch with the debian sarge 2.6.8
kernel sources.

But the kernel-source-2.6.8_2.6.8.orig.tar.gz is not the same as the
vanilla 2.6.8 tarball.  Diff shows non free drivers have been removed
from the debian "orig" tarball.

It's puzzling to me that the "orig" tar.gz is not the same as the
vanilla kernel.org tarball.  And it's a problem, because the openvz
patch wants to patch those non free drivers which have been removed.

I proceeded anyway with the debian "orig" tarball as-is, ignoring the
patch failures.  Then I worked through the debian patches, one by one,
until I applied all those which did not conflict with the openvz
patch.

Then I built a kernel and installed it, but the results were not good
(big surprise, heh).

Now I'm going to start over, but this time, use the vanilla kernel as
a base, to make the openvz patch happy.

My question is, why does the debian source package not start with the
vanilla tarball?  This is confusing to a beginner.

And how should I proceed, making a debian kernel source package which
uses the vanilla kernel tarball as its starting point?