Re: Making a Debian Kernel Patch

[Paolo Alexis Falcone <pfalcone@gmail.com>]

On Wed, 13 Oct 2004 21:43:52 +1000, Peter A. Cole
<peteracole@bigpond.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm a bit lost as to how to proceed here, and the dh-kpatches.html file and man dh_installkpatches are totally confusing me at this point in time.
> 
> I'm trying to find a way to get the Via EPIA kernel patch into a standard Debian patch form to apply to a custom kernel. I hope that makes sense.
> 
> Anyway, the patch is for extra features in the Via EPIA Nehemiah and C3 CPU's and my new mail server has one of these boards (V10000) in it, so I'd like to be able to get it to run optimally with the CPU.
> 
> I can't seem to find any suitable information on how to go from the vanilla kernel patch to a debian patch like, for example, the kernel-patch-mppe (which I will also be using).
> 
> Running man dh_installkpatches says it needs "debian/package.kpatches", which I take to mean that in the directory containing my patch, I create a directory called debian, and in this file place a file called something like via-epia.kpatches, containing the necessary lines as outlined in the man page.
> 
> I have done this, and dh_installkpatches complains of not having a control file, of which I can find no reference in the man page.
> 
> Anyway, I do realise that I'm doing the wrong thing, and am lacking the knowledge of exactly what it is I'm supposed to be doing, but I'm having trouble locating information telling me how to go about this.
> 
> Can someone head me in the right direction as to where to find this information?
> 
> Thanks in advance,

I think you're better off if you'd try applying the patches first
manually and see if the mixture of patches that you want would not
break with each other. Once you've already ascertained the viability
of such, then it's already trivial to create the patches as you'd just
verify how the debian kernel-patches are made from the source packages
- get them via apt-get source kernel-patch-somepatch to verify what
instructions were used.

-- 
Paolo Alexis Falcone
pfalcone@gmail.com