16 Sep 08 Adam’s Custom Kernel

I haven’t been doing much custom kernel building lately. I find that the only kernels I change are those on my VM host machines, and/or using apt-get for a general upgrade.

Nevertheless, here’s how I go about building my custom kernels for VM host machines running debian etch, using 2.6.18 of course:

[ You can also grab one from: http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/ ]

Make sure you install other relevant tools that you might not have:
apt-get install gcc libncurses5-dev libc6-dev automake binutils

Scroll to the bottom and select the option to load a configuration. Select /boot/config-2.6.18.

I then set my Processor family to suit, usually support RAM size up to 64G, and change the tick speed from 250MHz to 1000MHz.

Save and exit, now run:

Lastly edit your /boot/grub/menu.lst, and add [where /dev/sda1 is your root device]:

Make sure that you leave your existing kernel entries in place so that you can boot them if your upgrade fails.

Before reboot, check the following:
- root=/dev/sda1 is a correct and valid root device for your setup.
- All files mentioned in the addition to menu.lst exist and are named correctly
- You have backups of your current kernels and modules, and are able to boot them if necessary

reboot

Tags: Adams Custom Kernel, apt-get, boot, Custom Kernel, debian, grub, kernel upgrade, Linux, make

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