Damon Register wrote: > I was just reading in the SuSE Admin Guide for 9.1 about > the kernel compiling procedure. I read something that caught > my attention because I didn't notice it before and I don't > understand it. In section 10.3.3 it says "As the configuration > with make xconfig is not as well maintained as the other > configuration possibilites, run the command make oldconfig > after using this configuration method." > > Can anyone explain this? What is missing from xconfig and > what does the make oldconfig do to correct this?
I think SuSE 9.1 was the first SuSE distribution which came with kernel 2.6. Due to the change of the kernel build system (kernel 2.4 used a different way to configure and compile the kernel), the "make xconfig" part of the kernel build system was not very well maintained in early 2.6 kernels. As far as I know, developers had focussed on the "make config" or "make menuconfig" part. It could be that above mentioned comment in the Admin Guide is related to these circumstances. However, I do not recall any details - SuSE 9.1, that's a long time ago ;-) > I tried to find a more recent manual or howto that covers > kernel building but I don't find any at > http://www.opensuse.org. Can anyone please tell me where > I can find some current instruction on kernel building? http://www.digitalhermit.com/linux/Kernel-Build-HOWTO.html This Howto replaced the old "The Linux Kernel Howto". It's not SuSE specific. I wrote a SuSE-specific Kernel Howto, but it's only available in German at the moment, see http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse/2007-03/msg01324.html for details. There's also an official SuSE guide written by Andreas Gruenbacher, see http://www.suse.de/~agruen/kernel-doc/ for details (this document is also part of the SuSE kernel sources). > I also noticed in my 9.1 book, the method to use before > configuring the kernel is > > zcat /proc/config.gz > .config > make oldconfig > > I noticed that make cloneconfig from earlier instructions > still works but it is not mentioned in the 9.1 instructions. > Are the results different? No, the results should be the same. However, "make cloneconfig" is only available with SuSE kernel sources. The Makefile of the Vanilla kernel sources does not know about this target. HTH, Th. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
