[Novalug] Recompiling the Linux kernel

[James Ewing Cottrell 3rd]

While in theory this will work, each distro will add their own patches 
to the mix.

The main reason(s) to recompile the kernel are to
[1] tweak various settings
[2] choose from a variety of implementations, such as schedulers
[3] include, exclude, or compile a driver as a module

Red Hat has close to 200 patches to the kernel, for example. Debian, 
Suse, Ubuntu, et al have their own disjoint sets. Choosing what to 
include or exclude is a monumental task.

My advice would be to get the Vendor SRPM and trust their judgment on 
patches. Then compile all the modules you ever need (why is ext3 still a 
module???) and exclude stuff you never use (serial and parallel ports, 
IPv6).

Actually, I am in theory in favor of IPv6, but I just mentioned it as an 
example of something that was easy to exclude.

JIM

On 12/30/2011 3:33 PM, Ed James wrote:
> Well,  got the kenel source code (kernel.org), did the compile
> and install, but reboot borks.  The compile was using nothing
> but defaults, repeated the process twice, same results.
> Didn't have this problem several years ago when I
> did some re-compiles, so something's changed.
>
>     Creating root device.
>     Mounting root filesystem.
>     mount: could not find filesystem '/dev/root'<-- pretty sure this
> leads to rest of trubs
>     Setting up other filesystems.
>     Setting up new root fs
>     setuproot: moving /dev failed: No such file or directory
>     no fstab.sys, mounting internal defaults
>     setuproot: error mounting /proc: No such...
>
> I'm doing this using a FC install, but downloaded version 2.6.39.4.
> I really can't spot anything in grub.conf that is causing this.  Google
> shows other people with a similar problem (doesn't it always?) but
> no real solution. Oh, and I'm using a 32-bit kernel for a 32-bit
> machine.
>
> Is is possible I made too big a jump between versions?
>
> Ed James
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