Debian Reference
Chapter 7 - The Linux kernel under Debian
Debian has its own method of recompiling the kernel and related modules. See
also
Debian and the kernel,
Section 2.7.
7.1 Kernel recompile
The use of gcc, binutils, and modutils
from Debian unstable may help when compiling the latest Linux
kernel. See /usr/share/doc/kernel-package/README.gz, especially
the bottom of this, for the official information.
Since it is a moving target, kernel compilation is a difficult subject that may
confuse even the most admired developer:
- Manoj Srivastava wrote:
-
--initrd requires a Debian-only cramfs patch.
- Herbert Xu wrote:
-
No it does not, all you have to do to use a filesystem other than CRAMFS is to
set MKIMAGE in /etc/mkinitrd/mkinitrd.conf.
Be careful and always rely on the
/usr/share/doc/kernel-package/README.gz by Manoj and Kent. Make
sure to obtain the latest unstable version of the kernel-package
package if you are to compile the latest version of the kernel.
initrd is not needed for a kernel compiled only for one machine.
I use it since I want my kernel to be almost the same as the one provided by
the kernel-image packages. If you use initrd, make sure to read
mkinitrd(8) and mkinitrd.conf(5). See also https://bugs.debian.org/149236.
