Best practice to compile new FAI-Kernel?

[Terry Gliedt]

Juraj Holtak wrote:
> Am Montag, den 12.09.2005, 16:02 -0400 schrieb Terry Gliedt:
> 
> 
>>I just went through this, so here's what I discovered.
>>
>>I guess in theory you can take any 2.4 or 2.6 kernel source from 
>>kernel.org, but my experience was that I wasn't smart enough to actually 
>>make that work. The following, however, will absolutely work. The 
>>precise details might vary with your environment, but this should be 
>>very close to a "vanilla" setup. Good luck
>>
>>Juraj Holtak wrote:
>>
>>>is it a good idea to grab kernel config from a present FAI kernel and
>>>just apply it to a kernel of higher version?
>>>
>>>I need more actual kernels because I`m trying to setup some fancy
>>>maschines with sata drives and unsupported NICs.
>>>
>>>Are there any gotchas doing it so?
>>>
>>>Is somebody interessted in an unofficial FAI-kernel debian repository
>>>and a FAI script exchange website? I`m playing with the idea to setup
>>>something like this.
>>
>>* Get the Debian kernel source (e.g. /usr/src/kernel-source-2.4.27)
>>   I always make a symlink like this:
>>     ln -s /usr/src/kernel-source-2.4.27 /usr/src/linux
>>
>>* Get the config file from FAI. I did:
>>
>>   dpkg -x /data/tpg/libfai/kernel/kernel-image-2.4.27-fai_1_i386.deb  \ 
>>
>>        /tmp/crap
>>   Copy the config file from /tmp/crap/boot to /usr/src/linux/.config
>>
>>* Make the kernel as a Debian package
>>     cd /usr/src/linux
>>     make menuconfig
>>     make-kpkg clean
>>     make-kpkg --rootcmd fakeroot --append-to-version -fai \
>>         --revision 2 kernel-image
>>
>>* This results in a Debian FAI kernel package in /usr/src
>>   Copy this to /usr/lib/fai/kernel
>>     cp -p /usr/src/kernel-image-2.4.27-fai_2_i386.deb \
>>       /usr/lib/fai/kernel
>>
>>* Configure FAI to use this new kernel by setting this in
>>   /etc/fai/make-fai-nfsroot.conf
>>     KERNELPACKAGE=/usr/lib/fai/kernel/kernel-image-2.4.27-fai_2_i386.deb
>>
>>* Create a new FAI boot image
>>     make-fai-nfsroot -K
>>
>>* Create a new FAI bootfloppy or CD or whatever you use to boot. E.g.
>>     /usr/sbin/make-fai-bootfloppy -v \
>>       nfsroot=192.168.1.2:/usr/lib/fai/nfsroot \
>>       FAI_FLAGS=verbose,createvt vga=1
>>
> 
> 
> Have you had any problems with plain vanilla kernels or why did u use
> the debianized version?

Sorry to be slow in responding to this. I was going to repeat the 
experiment and show you exactly what the problem was. Yesterday I had to 
remake the FAI kernel again - this time moving to a 2.4.30 kernel with 
more SATA drivers than 2.4.27 (I'd recommend moving to this, there are 
several new SATA drivers in this version and EVERY machine we get these 
days uses SATA drives. IDE is not being used.)

Anyway, I remade the FAI kernel with a 2.4.30 vanilla kernel without a 
problem. So I guess the problem I had earlier was ME and not with the 
kernel :-)

To recap - you can use a vanilla kernel from www.kernel.org or a Debian 
kernel (and others I'm sure too). Things should go smoothly with make-kpkg.

-- 
=============================================================
Terry Gliedt     tpg at umich.edu       http://www.hps.com/~tpg/
Biostatistics, Univ of Michigan  Personal Email:  tpg at hps.com