Monthly Archives: December 2005

Playing hard to get

Posted by on December 3, 2005 Comments Off on Playing hard to get

In August 2004 I read an article by computer industry columnist John C. Dvorak about the digital divide being more about computer literacy and less about what equipment people have. At the time I was impressed by the article and searched for a copy to add to my digital article morgue of interesting bits but was unable to locate an electronic copy. The article was published in Computer Shopper magazine which is a somewhat sketchy publication and has changed hands and layouts several times. Of course they’re one of the few computer magazines that doesn’t post all their columns online. I held on to the original paper copy of that article for some time before deciding that I would never be able to find it when I wanted it if I kept the paper copy and recycling it.

Tonight I was catching up on some of my periodical reading and ran across a new column by Dvorak about democracy on the net which triggered a reminder about that old column. I decided that being an expert researcher in grad school and all I should be able to find a digital copy. I spent some time (probably too much) and tried all my usual research sites to no avail. I guess none of the big article reference houses (ProQuest, EBSCO, SIRS, etc.) think Computer Shopper is worth indexing and they’re probably right. On one of my last ditch efforts I was able to use an obscure research site for children doing school reports called the “Student Resource Center” which is run by Thomson Publishing/The Gale Group and which my local public libraray system subscribes to. Mission accomplished, one more article added to my personal morgue.

Recompiling a Debian Linux kernel package

Posted by on December 3, 2005 Comments Off on Recompiling a Debian Linux kernel package

I’m recompiling my linux kernel on one of my home (Debian) servers that has dual processors today. When I initially compiled the kernel on this system I mostly followed the instructions on this site. I’m going to base my recompile on those same instructions. If you’re looking for a very detailed guide to building a kernel package you might try this site.

The first thing I needed to do was make sure I had the appropriate tools to build a Debian kernel package (my preferred method of kernel installation) so I issued a command like this:

# apt-get install debhelper modutils kernel-package libncurses5-dev fakeroot

The next step is to download appropriate kernel source packages. I want both a 2.6.x and a 2.4.x kernel so I selected both:

# apt-get install kernel-source-2.4.27 kernel-source-2.6.8

To do this correctly you should change the kernel package config file to include specific (name & email) details about your package. I also made sure to set the SMP concurrency_level to 2.

# vi /etc/kernel-pkg.conf

Next I entered the source directory, unpacked the source and moved into the unpacked directory.

$ cd /usr/src
$ tar --bzip -xvf kernel-source-2.4.27.tar.bz2
$ cd kernel-source-2.4.27

Since I haven’t been having any problems with my existing kernel configuration and just want to make some changes to it I copied the existing config file into the source directory.

$ /usr/src/kernel-source-2.4.27
# cp /boot/config-2.4.26-20040815-1-chiefgreen .config

I like to modify my kernel settings using the menuconfig program.

$ make menuconfig

You want to clean existing build files before attempting a build.

$ make-kpkg clean

Time to build the kernel package, you can change the append information to match your specifics.

$ fakeroot make-kpkg --append_to_version -20051203-1-686-smp --initrd --revision=rev.01 kernel_image modules_image

You’ll get a warning about using initrd without the cramfs patch, we’re ok because we are using debian kernel sources and not pristine ones. Continue past the warning and take a break while your kernel builds. Next you’ll probably want to install your new kernel using the dpkg tool.

$ cd ..
# dpkg -i kernel-image-2.4.27-20051203-1-686-smp_rev.01_i386.deb

Check to make sure the boot loader is set to boot the new kernel, reboot and kick the tires.

If you want to add the MPPE patch to the kernel package you’ll need to do some additional work. I did this based on the instruction on this site. First get a copy of the MPPE patch.

# apt-get install kernel-patch-mppe

When you do your make-kpkg you need to add an –added-patches mppe command.

# make-kpkg --added-patches mppe --append_to_version -20051203-1-686-smp-mppe --initrd --revision=rev.01 kernel_image modules_image
During the build you will be asked if you want to include PPP MPPE compression. If you include it as a module after you reboot with your new kernel you can test it with:

# modprobe ppp-compress-18 && echo success

If this works, “success” will be displayed. If you are on a console or watching syslog, you may see:

ppp_mppe: module license 'BSD without advertisement clause' taints kernel.
PPP MPPE Compression module registered

These messages do not stop it from working.

If you find it’s taking far too long to build your kernel packages and you have other systems availible you may be able to use distcc to help speed the compiling process.