Debian: Building a Linux Kernel from Git
Building within Debian; steps for building a custom kernel directly from Linus’ Git repository.
Requires
- Git: apt-get install git
- Compiler and build tools: apt-get install build-essential
- ncurses library for menuconfig: apt-get install libncurses5-dev
Download the Kernel Source
Download the linux git repository to your ~/linux-2.6.git directory.
cd ~
git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git linux-2.6.git
cd linux-2.6.git
Check out a particular kernel version
To list the available kernel version tags:
git tag
Check-out a particular kernel version to compile:
git checkout -b AcerAspire_v2.6.35 v2.6.35
Configure the Kernel
Select the desired kernel options:
make menuconfig
The resulting config file is saved to .config.
Note: Unless you know your hardware very well, creating a .config file from scratch is a very daunting task. It is much better to start with an existing .config file from your existing kernel version source package or from another platform that is as close as possible to your desired configuration.
Save a copy of the config file in your repository so that you don’t lose it:
cp .config AcerAspire.config
git add AcerAspire.config
git commit -m “Save custom kernel config file.”
Compile the kernel for use with Debian:
make clean
make KDEB_PKGVERSION=custom.1.0 deb-pkg
Install the kernel
cd ..
ls -al *.deb
dpkg -i linux-image-2.6.35*.deb
update-grub
Reboot to try the new kernel.
Clean up:
Clean out build files:
make clean
Clean out all generated files including the .config file:
make distclean
References:
