Re: Buggy Kernel How-To?

[Roberto Sanchez <rcsanchez97@yahoo.es>]

Wolfgang Pfeiffer wrote:
> 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 is completely outdated, maybe even dangerously wrong, or ideas I found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

This is why you add yourself to the src group (which in the group that
owns /usr/src.  Then you untar in that directory as regular user and
then do something like this:

make menuconfig
fakeroot make-kpkg clean
fakeroot make-kpkg <options> kernel_image kernel_headers
cd ..
sudo dpkg -i *.deb

That way you only become root for the very last step.

-Roberto

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