On Fri, 13 Mar 2009 14:13:35 -0500 (CDT) "Aaron Martinez" <m...@proficuous.com> wrote:
> I'm running 4.4 Stable on i386 hardware and was wanting to make a > release. > > I was reading through the release man page and noticed it said a > GENERIC kernel is included with the release. I'm just wondering if > there is a way to include or replace the generic kernel with a > modified kernel. The only change i'm making is adding NTFS read > support. > > Thanks > > Aaron > You have a few different issues here: 1.) NTFS support is clearly marked "experimental" 2.) Enabling NTFS support *increases* the size of your kernel 3.) Modifying 'GENERIC' 'GENERIC.MP' and 'RAMDISK*' is a very bad idea because you'll be running kernels that others *think* are normal, but are actually custom. You probably understood #1, but the ramifications of #2 are the real killer, and #3 will only aggravate others if you need help. The increase in kernel size can (and most likely will) break the creation of various install images such as the floppy disk images (i.e. too big to fit on the floppy). Even if you don't use floppy disk images for installing, this is still a very bad idea. The easiest way to achieve what you want, namely to install a kernel with NTFS support by default, is to keep the release as is, and use the siteXX.tgz file to make modifications at the *end* of the installation process (i.e. replacing the GENERIC kernel(s) you just installed with the custom NTFS kernels you want to actually run). http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq4.html#site At the very end of the installation process, the siteXX.tgz file is unarchived in the same ways as the others (tar xzf siteXX.tgz) rooted at the / directory. This means you should be able to over-write the initially installed GENERIC kernels with your custom versions before the first reboot. Personally, I would leave the GENERIC kernels on the system (just in case) and *add* your custom kernels (SP MP) to the system with different names. To have your system boot to your custom kernels, you can use create a custom /etc/boot.conf and put that in your siteXX.tgz file (see boot.conf(8) for details). As long as you haven't done anything insane like having a super huge root partition (resulting in the start of your custom kernels potentially being outside of the bootable address range), you should have no problems booting to your additional custom kernel(s) on most modern x86 hardware. If you're using *really* old x86 hardware, you might hit this problem. Typically, if you keep your root partition to the 512MB suggested in the FAQ, you should be fine. -- J.C. Roberts
