[CentOS] newbie kernel question

[Ian mu]

People are still seemingly deciding whats "right" for a person without
knowing their situation. No one is asking for support on a kernel they've
compiled themselves, nor are they expecting it. They aren't going to slap
Centos when a problem arises from it and blame them.

Just some situations sometimes seem to require it. One thing I'll likely be
doing in the near future is changing the kernel frequency for example, and
as far as I know its only possible with a recompile. Its unlikely it will
break much, but if it does, thats on my head, and thats fine. I won't be
asking the list why my recompiled kernel suddenly has a fault unless its the
same on a default kernel of which I intend to run both, depending on
requirements.

I fully understand its not a Centos Supported issue in that sense due to its
position, but isn't this mainly what this email list is for as well (i.e to
bounce ideas, problems, solutions between each other who have hit a problem
and possibly come up with a solution albeit official or unnoficial whatever
that means in this context)?

Ian


On 4/2/06, Jim Perrin <jperrin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Everybody should want to recompile the kernel, if not
> > for the experience, but for removing the bloat.  Does
> > everybody really need every chipset compiled in the
> > kernel!
>
> Uh, that's the beauty of building modules. You only load what you
> need. And the rhel/centos kernel is almost entirely modular.
>
> If the degree of dificulty of building a
> > custom kernel on Centos change from the traditional
> > method (make clean, make mrproper, make xconfig, etc)
> > than say so, and point to an authoritative howto
> > guide, if there is any.
>
> The idea behind the EL kernel is that it's a stable, reliable, and can
> be duplicated quickly and reliably across multiple machines and
> environments. To some non-trivial extent it's also so that there's
> someone ELSE to blame if it doesn't work. For some reason, employers
> and corporations love to pay people for support rather than rely on
> the merits of their tech staff. Keep in mind the nearly 700 patches
> that are in the EL kernel source rpm. Red Hat has basically stated
> that if you build your own kernel, you're on your own to support it,
> and as such, they're not producing documentation on how to build your
> own. It's not just RHEL and CentOS moving this way. Mandriva, SuSE,
> and to an extent, Debian and Ubuntu are also like this.
>
>
> > But whatever you do please
> > don't insult by deciding for 98% of us what is and
> > what is not "something you really want to do".  I can
> > only speak for myself, and I really want to be able to
> > recompile the Centos kernel, otherwise I wouldn't
> > waste my energy  asking a zillion times how to compile
> > Centos' kernel.
>
> This has already been decided, and it's not an insult to you. How do
> you make a distribution easy to use, AND support kernel rebuilds? Is
> your mother or grandfather capable of rebuilding a kernel? Can they do
> it better than the RHEL developers who do it for a living? It's not an
> insult. It's a choice in ease of use vs support vs cost. If you're
> smart enough to rebuild the kernel, you're completely welcome to.
>
>
>
> > Second irony (from second hand information) is that
> > the vanila kernel compile just fine on Centos using
> > the traditional method.
>
> It does, but it's not the proper method for several reasons. Vanilla
> kernel source will also work on centos, but it's not something we
> recommend, and if you break it, you get to keep the pieces. The people
> who want to rebuild everything aren't the people in our target
> audience. They're in Gentoo's target audience.
>
> Now, to the information you wanted. There is a blog done by BJS which
> described the method, although I have misplaced the link. There is no
> official or otherwise documentation, because it's not something we
> actively support or recommend. Not to stop you, but for the simple
> logic of -> why waste time documenting something you aren't supporting
> when you can document the things you do support instead?
>
> If you search the late March list archive from the last week or so, I
> did a very brief walkthrough of how the rebuilding is actually done.
> You're welcome to read through that and see if it helps.
>
> If it doesn't.. .keep in mind that rebuilding the kernel isn't
> supported, and we've provided a kernel with the feature you claim to
> want. If you REALLY want to rebuild stuff and get your hands dirty for
> the experience, check out gentoo or LFS.
>
> --
> Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
> -Arthur C. Clarke
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>
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