How to apply patches before building kernel

["amit mehta" <amit4g@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

I'm trying to build linux kernel for version 2.6.24 on a machine running suse.
so i downloaded the kernel soruces and patches from :
ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/

I've downloaded following two compressed files:
linux-2.6.24.tar.bz2
patch-2.6.24.bz2

After uncompressing and making symlink as
ln -s /usr/src/linux-2.6.24 /usr/src/linux

I gave a dry run for patches as:
[root@venus ] cd /usr/src/linux
[root@venus /usr/src/linux ] # bzip2 -dc /usr/src/patch-2.6.24.bz2 | patch -p1 --dry-run
patching file .gitignore
Reversed (or previously applied) patch detected!  Assume -R? [n]

Seems that it found already applied patches, so what should i provide as answer to
the above querry(Assume -R? [n] ) , i gave "Y" as answer and then again there was
similar question for several other files . so is there any way to be able to overwrite the already applied
patches non interactively(i mean without answering the same question for other files as well) ?

~amit



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