Compiling kernel for second time

When I first compiled kernel for an application to work was an early time and supervised by a guru Anand Avati and supported by Shantharam. ( I miss both of them sometime)

it was then simple

#make menuconfig

select all the things you need ( Ah.. you should know what are all hardware you have and what functionalities you required)

#make

copy the image to /usr/src

make the changes in /etc/lilo and run lilo and reboot.

It was almost 3-4 years back and I almost forget about it by now.

Even though my lenova think center Desktop was working fine with 1 GB utilized RAM by the kernel without high memory support, there was a bug pricking me inside telling that I am wasting some inventory. And I have decided to do the kernel compiling again.

Well now things got changed. Earlier the linux flavour was slackware and now it is debian ( I shifted to debian because of the "apt-get" .. ;) ) When I asked Shashi how to do kernel compiling in Debian he sent me a link ( http://newbiedoc.sourceforge.net/system/kernel-pkg.html ) which has the details. As usual I was lazy enough not to go through it.

And one day as their was a police firing in Haavery and I donot have really business critical thing to do in my office. thought I can give try to do the kc without waiting for anybody.

Steps followed were simpler. Some mistakes for sure.. But finally kernel compiled and I am able to see this finally.

manjax# free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 2067516 810884 1256632 0 105608 393188
-/+ buffers/cache: 312088 1755428
Swap: 2731040 0 2731040

Steps are very simple as follows

Download the required applications and kernel source

manjax# apt-get install gcc kernel-package kernel-source-(uname -r) libc6-dev tk8.3 libncurses5-dev fakeroot

To use the exiting config for the new kernel compilation

manjax# cp /boot/config-(uname-r) .config
manjax# make oldconfig

Actual build of the Kernel (You have to wait till you burn couple of cigerettes with safety gap between them)

manjax# make-kpkg --initrd --append-to-version=-highmem kernel_image

To Install the build to perform

manjax# dpkg -i kernel_image-highmem

To make it active

manjax# reboot

viola, If everything is fine the new customized kernel will start working. Otherwise please repeat the steps as above. :P

PS : Donot looooooose heart.. I got the thing working only in 6th reboot.