[CentOS-devel] testing centos 5 kernels

Wed Mar 11 14:05:20 UTC 2009
Farkas Levente <lfarkas at lfarkas.org>

Alan Bartlett wrote:
> On 08/03/2009, Farkas Levente <lfarkas at lfarkas.org> wrote:
> 
>>  now one last question/remark about the page:
>>  http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/Custom_Kernel
>>  in sec 4. you wrote to comment out the
>>  "if a rhel kernel, apply the rhel config options"
>>  blocks, but for me it's not working. ie. in case of
>>  kernel-2.6.18-128.1.1.el5 if i comment out that part then i've got an
>>  error during kernel compile:
>>  -----------------------------------------
>>  + for i in '*.config'
>>  + mv kernel-2.6.18-i686-PAE.config .config
>>  ++ head -1 .config
>>  ++ cut -b 3-
>>  + Arch=i386
>>  + make ARCH=i386 nonint_oldconfig
>>  CONFIG_PATA_ISAPNP
>>  make[1]: *** [nonint_oldconfig] Error 1
>>  make: *** [nonint_oldconfig] Error 2
>>  error: Bad exit status from /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.88925 (%prep)
>>  -----------------------------------------
>>  while if i leave it there than compile without any problem. anyway
>>  config-rhel-generic contains only option which are not set so why would
>>  be useful to comment out?
>>  so imho that part is not required what's more not working.
>>  yours.
> 
> I am sorry but I do not see from where your problem arises. It is
> possibly related to a  language issue.
> 
> What I will say is that the technique described has been necessary to
> enable a user to build a customised CentOS kernel ever since the very
> first kernel-2.6.18-8.el5 package was released.
> 
> Will you please formulate your uncertainty into a question and then
> post it to the CentOS-5 General Support forum. In that way my
> colleague, good friend and co-maintainer of the article -- Akemi Yagi
> (aka toracat) -- may also see what it is that concerns you. We may
> then be able to clarify things.

ok so let me clarify this.
imho keep the diff from rh's spec as little as possible is a good goal.
on page sec 4:
http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/Custom_Kernel
you wrote to delete/comment out the
"if a rhel kernel, apply the rhel config options"
part which is imho unnecessary, what's more wrong.
the file config-rhel-generic contains only commented out kernel config
options (except the CONFIG_RAW_DRIVER=y). so these won't hurt anyone.
and if someone add the same kernel config param to the resulting config
then the first kernel config ie:
make -s ARCH=$Arch nonint_oldconfig > /dev/null
will ignore those commented out configs.
so i don't really understand the reason for this advice since it won't
hurt anyone but can cause errors (like in my case in the above kernel
compile error).

ps. anyway i also not understand why you prefer to modify rh's spec from:
%define with_debug     %{?_without_debug: 0} %{!?_without_debug: 1}
to
%define with_debug     0
instead of suggest to build with  --without debug --without debuginfo?

pss. i we discuss this page:-) for me it's totally the same, but why you
prefer/suggest to use
%define buildid .your_identifier
over to add a suffix to the dist tag (while you also modify dist in
centosplus kernels)?

yours.

-- 
  Levente                               "Si vis pacem para bellum!"