Re: kernel upgrade options
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On Wed, 27 Oct 1999, John wrote:
> I have upgraded from 2.0.36 to 2.2.1 without appearing to cause
> any great disasters, and with surprising results. At present, I boot
> from a floppy and it now takes 36 secs to reach the log-in screen
> instead of 3mins 50 secs. So far as I can tell everything works very
> well and the speed is far greater than I need - to me it seems
> blindingly fast.
i noticed that too when i first remade my boot floppy. It depends on the
particular command used to create the thing, i don't know the specific
details.
> However, I have what seems to be one potential problem, some
> cleaning-up to do (Ihope its only that) and a few questions to
> take my knowledge a little further.
>
> Firstly, when I boot, I do not get an opportunity apply any
> parameters - the reference to (I think) Peter Anwin and the boot
> prompt do not appear - the word 'loading' and a fast moving line
> of dots then right into the 'init' and up comes the log-in screen. (No
> time to pick up my coffee mug). What have I omitted? I don't know
> what will happen if 'rescue' is needed. After 'make config', 'make
> dep', and 'make clean' I used 'make bzdisk' which gave me the disk
> I now use for booting.
Check your lilo.conf, as others have mentioned. Although, if you're using
a boot floppy all the time this may or may not be applicable (i boot
direct from my hd)
> The kern.log now seems basically very clean to me - the only items
> I do not understand are 'cannot find map file' and 'work around ISA
> DMA hangs' followed by 'activating ISA DMA hang work arounds'
> - I presume the latter two just show a correction working.
When you compile a kernel manually, you have to copy the System.map file
from the base directory of the kernel source into /boot. I'd recommend
renaming it to System.map-2.2.1 at the same time.
> I find some files confusing and am not sure what I should get rid of.
> /usr/src now contains kernel-source-2.2.1.tar.gz (1.3M which I put
> there) and a directory kernel-source-2.2.1 which includes vimlinuz
> (1.3M) dated Oct 25.
You can delete kernel-source-2.2.1.tar.gz if you want to. If you ever need
it again, it should still be on the CD.
You should keep the kernel-source-2.2.1 directory for patching.
> /usr/include/linux still has Oct 5 date (my original installation).
i'd leave that as-is. i suspect that's the kernel headers installed by the
libc6-dev package.
> / has vmlinuz (19 Bytes) linked to /boot/vmlinuz also dated Oct 5
You copied the vmlinuz into boot as stated in the kernel docs? Good.
Although, i'd call it vmlinuz-2.2.1 to make it easy to tell which kernel
version it is. If you decide to rename it, make sure to fix the symlink in
/.
The symlink in / isn't technically necessary, but if it always points to
your current vmlinuz in /boot, you then don't have to edit lilo.conf every
time you change the kernel. Just retarget the link and rerun lilo.
i also have a vmlinuz.old symlink pointing to the previously installed
kernel version. In my lilo.conf, i have an alias set up to boot this, just
in case a new kernel refuses to work i can still boot the old.
> and /boot/vmlinuz-2.0.36 is 715K again Oct 5.
This is your old kernel. Once you're sure 2.2.1 works fine for you, you
can delete it if you want. As i mentioned above, i always keep a
known-stable kernel linked from lilo.conf.
> If there is nothing sinister arising out of the above, I propose to apply
> patches 2 to 7 and then on to 12.
Go to 13, it fixes some problems with 12. In particular, i wouldn't bother
to compile 8, 9, 10, 11, or 12, just do the patching.
> I have started to prepare for this but find a confusion in Brian
> Ward's Linux Kernel HOWTO. Under 5.1 'Applying a patch', after the
> initial steps, it says 'If everything went right, do a 'make clean',
> 'config', and 'dep' as described etc' Do I take it I should follow
> that order?
I'd recommend to follow these steps if you insist on doing it manually:
1) Backup the .config file
2) 'make mrproper'
3) Patch the thing. Watch for rejects. Fix them if they're important.
4) Restore the .config
5) 'make oldconfig' or your favorite of {menuconfig,xconfig,config}
6) Do exactly what you did after 'make config' to compile this one.
Although, instead of all that i'd use make-kpkg (from the kernel-package
package). It takes care of System.map, those symlinks in /, and can be
managed with dpkg/dselect.
1) 'make-kpkg clean'
2) Patch it, just like above.
3) 'make oldconfig' or your favorite of {menuconfig,xconfig,config}
4) 'make-kpkg --rev revision kernel-image'
^^^^^^^^
People will give you much conflicting information about what to use
for this parameter. i personally use something along the format of
"2.2.11-anomie.1". I should use an epoch, something like
"3:2.2.11-anomie.1".
5) If you ALSA, pcmcia, or any other kernel add-ons that depend on the
kernel version (and which the Debian packages put in
/usr/src/modules), you'll want to do
'make-kpkg --rev revision modules-image' to build those. If you don't
use any of them, skip this step.
6) Install the debs produced with dpkg -i.
- --
finger for PGP public key.
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