just for anyone who needs all the details (step by step), here's
what it takes to play with the latest 2.5 kernels (at least on
red hat 9).
1) upgrade to the latest red hat rawhide versions of both the
modutils and mkinitrd RPMs. you *need* the latest modutils RPM
to understand the 2.5 kernel, but that RPM is backward-compatible
if you want to reboot back to 2.4. (when, oh when, is red hat
finally going to get a grip and have the URL rawhide.redhat.com
take one *directly* to the rawhide repository? sigh.)
2) get latest kernel tarball (2.5.73 at last glance) from www.kernel.org
or ftp.kernel.org, and unload it under /usr/src. there is no need to
mess with symlinks, as the tarballs from kernel.org automatically
unload into the appropriate directory name (linux-2.5.73).
3) in order to be *really* up to date, grab the latest BK patch from
kernel.org, and patch.
4) "make mrproper" in the new source directory, just to play it safe.
5) do your very first configure. you can either grab your old
.config and "make oldconfig", or do a real "make xconfig" and
admire all the new options. (if you grab an old 2.4 .config file,
be prepared to answer lots of queries about new options.)
6) build new compressed kernel and modules with
# make bzImage
# make modules
once all that succeeds, copy/install everything with
# cp arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/vmlinuz-2.5.73-bk5 (or whatever)
# make modules_install
create a new initrd image with
# mkinitrd /boot/initrd-2.5.73-bk5.img 2.5.73-bk5
NOTE: about the mkinitrd command:
1) it does not have to be done from within the kernel source dir
2) it can be done only *after* the "make modules_install" command,
as it requires the corresponding /lib/modules directory to exist.
finally, edit /etc/grub.conf, add a new entry for the new kernel, and
reboot.
did i forget anything?
rday
--
Robert P. J. Day
Eno River Technologies
Unix, Linux and Open Source training
Waterloo, Ontario
www.enoriver.com
