Creating a Debian Kernel Package for v2.6.26
There are so many guides out there on how to make a Linux kernel and so many of them are out of date, I thought I should write down a simple step-by-step of the current way to do it as of early 2009.
My goal here was to compile a new kernel for a Debian 4.0 (Etch) system. You can download pre-built kernels but I wanted to modify some drivers before building it.
Anyway, you will firstly need the source code. Go to the Debian Backports Repository and grab the latest linux-source package. Before installing it, you will need to install some tools:
sudo apt-get install kernel-package fakeroot libncurses5-dev
Now we can install the source:
sudo dpkg -i linux-image-2.6.26_dvc.1.2_i386.deb cd /usr/src tar jxvf linux-source-2.6.26.tar.bz2 ln -s linux-source-2.6.26 linux cd linux
Next you need to configure the kernel. A good way is to simply copy the current kernel configuration:
cp /boot/config-2.6.18-6-686 ./.config
Finally, launch the make-kpkg utility. This will configure, compile and package the kernel in a DEB package.
fakeroot make-kpkg --revision=mycustomkernel-1.0 --config menuconfig --initrd kernel_image
This will launch the kernel configuration menu first. You can make any configuration changes here but usually the defaults are fine. When it is all done you will have the completed package file in /usr/src.
I don’t know if it is documented in the kernel, but it seems to me to be a little known fact that ‘make menuconfig’ requires libncurses5-dev as you have rightly mentioned here, because the kernel compiles its configuration tool just before you invoke it, which is pretty neat.
On the kernel config file: recent kernels have the option to stow away in the kernel image the .config file they were built with; if it’s there, just do a ‘zcat /proc/config.gz > .config’ and never misplace a kernel config ever again.
Also, if you don’t have a problem with using a kernel.org kernel, the ‘ketchup’ tool is really nice for automagic kernel downloading and quick incremental updating.
Is it possible to build the kernel with the “debuild” or the “dpkg-buildpackage” or inside “pbuilder” with the “standard” debian/rules mechanism?
No idea, sorry.