[NBLUG/talk] Gentoo

Lincoln Peters sampln at sbcglobal.net
Thu Aug 17 18:38:40 PDT 2006


On Thursday 17 August 2006 14:29, C. Mike Rice wrote:
> William Tracy wrote:
> > Well, I now have Gentoo working.
> > ... Whew. For starters, this is the first time I've compiled a kernel
> > myself THAT ACTUALLY WORKS! I've built kernels before, but I always
> > screwed up some option badly enough that within ten minutes I was
> > rebooting back to my distribution's stock kernel. This is cool. :-)
> >
> > William
>
> I'm compiling gentoo for the first time and now I have a question:
> On this laptop (Inspiron 6000) I followed a good-looking script for
> kernel.config, with only a few items taking space in the kernel itself.
> That left me with 290 modules. ouch. The install instructions tell me to
> copy the modules I found into /etc/modules.autoload.d/(KERNEL_NAME).

That's odd.  I usually run "make modules_install", and all of my kernel 
modules are automatically copied to /lib/modules/(KERNEL_NAME).

The procedure I typically use is:

1. Extract kernel sources.

2. Run "make menuconfig".  Choose the desired settings.  My rule is that only 
those options you need in order to boot the system should be built into the 
kernel (unless you plan to use an initrd, which I never do); all other 
options should be either built as modules or left out entirely, depending on 
whether or not you expect to ever use them.

3. Run "make".

4. Run "make modules_install".

5. Copy the kernel image at arch/i386/boot/bzImage to your /boot directory, 
giving it a descriptive name (e.g. "vmlinuz-2.6.16.20lincoln").  Edit your 
LILO or GRUB configuration so it can boot the new kernel.

6. Do not reboot just yet!  Verify that your LILO or GRUB settings will still 
allow you to boot from the old kernel, just in case something does wrong with 
the new kernel (the consequences of not doing this before you boot the new 
kernel may be unpleasant).


-- 
Lincoln Peters		<sampln at sbcglobal.net>

I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today.
		-- William Allen White



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