Buggy Kernel How-To?
Hi all,
Either the Kernel How-To, as it is available from
<http://www.uni-tuebingen.de/zdv/zriinfo/linux/howto/English/Kernel-HOWTO-4.html#ss4.2>
is completely outdated, maybe even dangerously wrong, or ideas I found
in postings from
<http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2000/debian-user-200008/thrd3.html#01345>
are wrong.
The Kernel How-To above, as I understand it, tells me to unpack the
kernel source as root in /usr/src/. Whereas in the postings from
debian-user to exactly *not* do this:
"another good reason to avoid extracting tarballs as root is one could
send you a tarball with a file /etc/passwd (with the absolute path
embedded), if you extract it as root your /etc/passwd would be
replaced... "
And:
"And Linus has also pointed out several times that people should *not*
compile kernels in /usr/src/linux, and instead do it in their home
directory as a regular user, not root. The only time you should become
root is when you install the kernel."
So, in short, what I found by googling about for some time: The correct
way seems to be to put the kernel-source in my (non-root) home
directory, and then
cd /usr/src/
ln -s /home/<someuser>/kernel-sources linux
and then, as non-root, compile the kernel in
/usr/src/linux/
(And then forget about some of the stuff I read in the Kernel-HowTo ?)
The background to all this is that I tried to get the kernel sources as
non-root while being in /usr/src/<some.kernel.directory> with rsync:
Which, IIRC, isn't possible. A non-root doesn't have the permission to
download stuff to this dir, right?
So the only chance I have to get the sources in there is to run rsync as
root: Which is ugly wrong if I learned my lessons well: You never even
try to access the net as root. Right?
Thanks in anticipation.
Best Regards,
Wolfgang
--
Profile, Links:
http://profiles.yahoo.com/wolfgangpfeiffer
Reply to: