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Re: Why compiling.

On 10/07/12 10:52 PM, Celejar wrote:

On Tue, 10 Jul 2012 19:20:05 -0400
Gary Dale<garydale@rogers.com>  wrote:


On 10/07/12 04:22 PM, Andrei POPESCU wrote:

On Ma, 10 iul 12, 15:08:52, Celejar wrote:

And why do I care whether the kernel I compile locally for a
specific machine is portable?

Imagine a situation where due to whatever reason the kernel image of
your router machine gets corrupted, then you can just copy the file from
another machine ;)

Kind regards,
Andrei

Or if you need to change your hardware. Or if you want to use your drive
to boot another machine - such as for testing or demonstration purposes.

Well, you were the one suggesting that one only needs a custom kernel
for special, unusual cases. I daresay that for most users of linux,
removing a HDD to boot another machine for testing or demonstration
purposes is rather a special case ...
Not really. Linux isn't Windows where you need to install onto each machine. Booting from a temporarily attached HD proves the concept then a quick dd gets you up and running. Some people do this from a USB or e-SATA drive, with full read-write capability that is often lacking from USB stick / live CDs.
Of course, the more normal problem is that you're trying to recover from a hardware failure or upgrade and your custom kernel no longer boots. 




Having a portable kernel is a lot simpler than trying to rescue a
non-bootable machine from a live CD.

True - but then I can just grab a distro stock kernel before I swap
HDDs.
You still need to go through the aggravation of booting from a live CD then setting up a chroot environment just to get around the fact that you compiled a non-portable kernel. You wouldn't have to do any of that if you had just stuck with the stock kernel.
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