Has anyone built a kernel in Suse 9.1 ?

[Penguin_newbie]

Has anyone managed to compile or recompile a new kernel in Suse 9.1?
I've been trying all week with a various versions of the 2.6 kernel and can't seem to get one up and running.

If has anyone here done this and if so, are there any obvious pitfalls?

(incidently, I have followed every step of this guide : http://www.digitalhermit.com/linux/Kernel-Build-HOWTO.html#INTRO
religiously )

[danimal1009]

Have you tried using Suse supplied kernel sources (if they have 2.6 ones yet, that is)? It will have all the special patches and modifications made by Suse already in there. I remember one time I tried to compile a stock (kernel.org) kernel in Mandrake once. I was never able to get it to work. I had to use the sources that came on the disks of that paticular version (9.2 I think). Then I wanted to make an up to date kernel, so I went to download an official Mandrake kernel source for the newest kernel at that time. It was 130 MB... Yikes! Talk about bloat! Although I'm sure its gotten even bigger by now. Thats a big reason why I switched to debian... Less bloat, and I can easily compile stock kernels in it.

Well, enough rambling... The point is, I don't know if Suse is all bloated like Mandrake, but its worth a shot to see if Suse supplies their special modified 2.6 kernel sources...

[Penguin_newbie]

Thanks for the tip danimal1009.
Yes, I was trying to build a vanilla kernel from
Kernel.org.

I'll have a look to see if Suse supply their own kernel sources.

Incidently, why can one only build kernels from, say Suse, if one is using Suse?


I remember a couple of years ago dabling with Linux and RH 7 and building kernels from kernel.org.Didn't seem to be a problem then.

[hard candy]

Incidently, why can one only build kernels from, say Suse, if one is using Suse?

Since it is a German distribution, the module interfaces would need a kernel translator in order to communicate with user space if the user happened to be French, Italian, English, etc. And Suse doesn't have an user-space translator available.

[ludwig1]

So, what you're saying is that I can't build a new kernel.org kernel in Suse because:

1.Suse is German
2.New kernels (from Kernel.org) are English
3.The two can't 'speak' to each other

?
:confused:

[Parcival]

Originally posted by hard candy
Since it is a German distribution, the module interfaces would need a kernel translator in order to communicate with user space if the user happened to be French, Italian, English, etc. And Suse doesn't have an user-space translator available.

Sorry hard candy, but this doesn't make any sense to me at all. The way things look to me it's only the screen texts and the helpfiles that change the language, but for the rest the programs stay the say.

You can build a kernel from kernel.org in any distribution you want, in our LUG do it all the time. Depending on the distribution it can get somewhat tricky, though.

You only get the kernel sources as an RPM in SuSE, BTW, if you buy the professional edition.

[pilotgi]

It's kind of hard to diagnose your problem without knowing the specific errors. I have built kernels successfully in SUSE 9.0 but I haven't tried in 9.1 yet.

Some suggestions:

Unpack the kernel in your home directory.

Use the mkinitrd command for SUSE in the example.

cp the kernel and SystemMap _before_ doing the mkinitrd command.

Edit: The mkinitrd command I use I found on a SUSE mailing list. It starts out mk_initrd instead of mkinitrd and then everything else is the same as the example. Of course, if you're not having problems with the initrd, this probably won't matter.

HTH

[bwkaz]

Originally posted by hard candy
Since it is a German distribution, the module interfaces would need a kernel translator in order to communicate with user space if the user happened to be French, Italian, English, etc. And Suse doesn't have an user-space translator available. Um, I'm hoping this is one of your less-than-serious replies, HC. Because it doesn't make any sense... :D

[ludwig1]

Edit: The mkinitrd command I use I found on a SUSE mailing list. It starts out mk_initrd instead of mkinitrd and then everything else is the same as the example. Of course, if you're not having problems with the initrd, this probably won't matter.

Hi,
can you tell me the exact form of the mk_initrd ?

thanks

[pilotgi]

Originally posted by ludwig1
Hi,
can you tell me the exact form of the mk_initrd ?

mk_initrd -k [new kernel] -i [new initrd]

Example:

mk_initrd -k bzImage-2.6.7 -i initrd-2.6.7

[ludwig1]

thanks for that :)

[Bam]

This tutorial might help you out:
http://www.linuxforum.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=85639

I'm still running SuSE 9.0 (w/ kernel 2.6.4-52 installed from the 9.1 rpms) so I haven't tried this myself.

[Penguin_newbie]

Thanks for that link. That seems like a great tutorial.

Cheers :)

[schwartz]

Thanks a Lot!!!!