On Wed, 14 Apr 2004, Matt Hansen wrote: ... snip ... > Hi all, > > Where would a "make rpm" target fit into these steps? I would think > these kernel compilation steps should include this should it not? > Wouldn't it be cleaner and more manageable to create an RPM out of this > process? i've built and installed a *lot* of kernels, and i've never found any overwhelming need for creating an RPM. regardless of whether it's a 2.4 or 2.6 kernel, the recipe is pretty straightforward: 1) edit Makefile, change EXTRAVERSION variable to not clash with any existing builds 2) config and compile new kernel, copy to /boot under new name vmlinuz-foo 3) make modules and install them, verify new directory under /lib/modules 4) mkinitrd to build new initrd.img under /boot 5) edit grub.conf (or lilo.conf) to add new stanza for new kernel and initrd 6) reboot to test obviously, there are endless subtle variations on the above, but what i think has been lost in this recent exchange is that the same recipe is not going to be appropriate for everyone. what's missing, and i think a lot of linux documentation suffers from this, is that there is a dearth of documentation explaining *why* you do certain things. a lot of documentation has incredibly detailed recipes for how to do something, with little rationale for those steps, why certain things are being done, and why you might want/need to do them differently. to paraphrase, give a man a recipe for building a new kernel, you get rid of him for a day. *teach* him the intricacies of building that kernel and why certain things are done the way they're done, and you get rid of him for life. :-) rday
