Kernel compilation Question

Hi all,

I tried compiling the wireless 2.6 kernel on my debian machine using make-kpkg and being lazy, i just did make defconfig, and saw that my compilation went fine without any issues, but i noticed that there was no ramdisk image that was generated when i installed the linux-image*.deb.

i did use --initrd option,

Was it because, using make defconfig compiles everything on the kernel itself? Aren't there any 'm' option in defaults?(dunno just asking if this is the case)

or did i miss something out

Please see if i missed some step

Summary of steps performed.

extracted wireless 2.6 source onto /usr/src

created symbolic link

make defconfig (i did not copy my existing config file to .config, i just wanted to try out make defconfig option)

make-kpkg --initrd --append-to-version=foo --revision=bar kernel_image modules_image kernel_headers

this created 2 files linux-image* and linux-headers*, i was missing the modules image also(but that was a second question)

did dpkg -i linux-image*

updated grub and placed files in /boot, but did not create initrd image. Why is that?

Thanks

Balaji R

Hi

For questions about Debian specific packaging helpers like kernel-package[1], you would better contact [email protected] instead.

[...]

Please read /usr/share/doc/kernel-package/README.gz [2], it explains which hook scripts you have to configure for generating an initramfs, --initrd is not sufficient anymore[3] (since kernel-package 12.000).

Also consider that the Debian kernel team considers kernel-package to be deprecated in favour of the upstream kernel build system's own "make deb-pkg" target[4].

Unrelated to this topic, I'd suggest to take the configs of your running (distribution-) kernel as starting point, because this likely introduces the least amount of surprise (ide vs. libata storage layer, etc.).

Regards
Stefan Lippers-Hollmann

[1] http://packages.debian.org/sid/kernel-package
[2] http://git.debian.org/?p=users/srivasta/debian/kernel-package.git;a=blob;f=README (line 284ff)
[3] http://www.golden-gryphon.com/blog/manoj//blog/2009/04/07/Not_your_father__39__s_kernel-package/
[4] http://lists.debian.org/debian-kernel/2009/10/msg00613.html

Hi Stephen,

Thanks for your reply. Wow, the four references that you provided makes lot more sense to me. I shall try using some examples in readme mentioned below.

Thanks

Balaji R