Re: [PLUG] how kernel compiling works

[Kevin Brosius <kbrosius@kns.com>]

Wayne Dawson wrote:
> 
> Jesus F. Christ!  There *has* to be a better way!!!  I just sat here for a
> GD hour answering all those f***ing prompts to recompile the kernel.
> 
> I know that recompiling the kernel is no small matter.  But holy shit, when
> you make bzImage you ought to be able to do all the config of what to
> include in the kernel (and how) by some mass table of info, instead of
> choosing every single thing at a GD prompt!
> 
> Ok, my earlier idea of recompiling "as is" clearly doesn't fit with the way
> the Linux kernel is set up to compile (at least not by the procedure at
> http://www.europe.redhat.com/documentation/HOWTO/Kernel-HOWTO-2.php3).
> Every time you recompile, you have to pick every f***ing section of
> reconfigurable code at a prompt - that is, for every section of
> reconfigurable code, you have to pick y, n, or m.  That's not 100%
> accurate, since some sections only allow two of the three options.  I
> assume y means "Yes, compile this into the kernel", n means "No, don't
> support this", and m means "allow this to be loaded as a Module".
> 
> Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong.
> 
> And somebody *please* tell me if there's a better way available to pick
> what gets compiled in and what doesn't!
> 
> Thanks,
> Wayne
> 

As others have said...  'make xconfig' is the place to start.  However,
your distro should have a config file for the existing kernel.  Starting
with that may be better, depending on what you are trying to do.

On SuSE, and with a SuSE kernel source tree, you can even pull the
config from a running kernel to configure the source tree.  Rather cool
feature I thought.  I think you can do the same thing with any kernel
that has the compressed config capability built in, just copy the config
from the /proc directory in the kernel source '.config' file,
decompress, and 'make oldconfig'.

-- 
Kevin Brosius
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