Re: [DSA-403-1] Kernel update?

[Harshwardhan Nagaonkar <harsh@ee.byu.edu>]

And thus we see that Harshwardhan Nagaonkar said, :
> And thus we see that Bob Proulx said, :
> > Bill Moseley wrote:
> <snip>
> > If you cannot wait then you would need to compile the 2.4.23 kernel
> > yourself.  That was released only three days ago and has not
<snip>
> I'm trying to take this route of compiling the vanilla kernel myself. 
> I've compiled the kernel many times before for different purposes. I've 
> been able to accomplish this using "make-kpkg"; it is a great and 
> infinitely helpful tool.
<snip>
> My question is:
> 1) Where is this cramfs initrd patch available for download?
>
> I've googled for it, but only seemingly relevant is a thread that has 

Ok, I've done some more Manual-reading (I should probably have done this 
before shooting off the email.) Here is what I've found from kernel 
documentation in the kernel-source package 
(/usr/share/doc/kernel-source-2.4.x/debian.readme.gz).

> NOTE about using initial ram disk images (initrd).  Recent official
>  kitchen sink kernel image packages tend to use this, in order to
>  accomodate as wide a vareity of root file system types as humanly
>  possible without building them all into the kernel. In order to use
>  these images, you need to instruct you boot loader that this is a
>  kernel image using intrd, and tell the boot loader where to find the
>  initrd image.  Unfortunately, you can't just substitute a non initrd
>  image afterwards without changing the boot loader instructions.
>  Additionally, the mkinitrd program in Debian creatre a cramfs initrd,
>  and you need an additional cramfs initrd patch in the kernel to be
>  able to load the initrd. This patch is shipped with official debian
>  kernel sources. So, you must apply the patch, or configure mkintrd to
>  use another file system. like ext2. So, if your boot loader
>  configuration expects to see an initrd image, add --initrd to the
>  above invocation, like so:

and also

> Phase TWO: Create a portable kernel image .deb file
>  3% make-kpkg clean
>  4% $Get_Root make-kpkg --revision=custom.1.0 kernel_image
<snip>
>    % $Get_Root make-kpkg --initrd --revision=custom.1.0 kernel_image
>       Personally, I prefer non initrd images for my personal machines,
>       since then adding third party modules to the machine has fewere
>       gotchas
        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

So, does this mean that I can compile my kernel without initrd, and it 
will still not break on debian? I understand that this will involve 
editing /etc/lilo.conf and getting rid of the initrd line. Any other 
gotchas that I should know about?

Thanks for all the help,
--
Harshwardhan Nagaonkar
Electrical Engineering Sysop
Brigham Young University, UT-84602