ketchup
is a very handy tool used to update or
switch between different versions of the Linux kernel source tree. It has
the ability to:
-
Find the latest version of the kernel, download it, and uncompress it.
-
Update a currently installed version of the kernel source tree to any other
version, by patching the tree to the proper version.
-
Handle the different development and stable branches of the kernel
tree, including the -mm and -stable trees.
-
Download any patches or tarballs needed to do the update, if they
are not present on the machine already.
-
Check the GPG signatures of the tarball and patches to verify that it
has downloaded a correct file.
ketchup
can be found at
https://www.selenic.com/ketchup/
and has lots of additional documentation in the wiki at
https://www.selenic.com/ketchup/wiki/.
.
Here is a set of steps that show how simple it is to use
ketchup
to download a specific kernel version, and then
have it switch the directory to another kernel version with only a minimal
number of commands.
To have
ketchup
download the 2.6.16.24 version of the
kernel source tree into a directory, and rename the directory to be the
same as the kernel version, enter:
$
mkdir foo
$
cd foo
$
ketchup -r 2.6.16.24
None -> 2.6.16.24
Unpacking linux-2.6.17.tar.bz2
Applying patch-2.6.17.bz2 -R
Applying patch-2.6.16.24.bz2
Current directory renamed to /home/gregkh/linux/linux-2.6.16.24
Now, to upgrade this kernel to contain the latest stable kernel version, just
enter:
$
ketchup -r 2.6
2.6.16.24 -> 2.6.17.11
Applying patch-2.6.16.24.bz2 -R
Applying patch-2.6.17.bz2
Downloading patch-2.6.17.11.bz2
--22:21:14-- https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/patch-2.6.17.11.bz2
=> `/home/greg/.ketchup/patch-2.6.17.11.bz2.partial'
Resolving www.kernel.org... 204.152.191.37, 204.152.191.5
Connecting to www.kernel.org|204.152.191.37|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 36,809 (36K) [application/x-bzip2]
100%[====================================>] 36,809 93.32K/s
22:21:14 (92.87 KB/s) - `/home/greg/.ketchup/patch-2.6.17.11.bz2.partial' saved [36809/36809]
Downloading patch-2.6.17.11.bz2.sign
--22:21:14-- https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/patch-2.6.17.11.bz2.sign
=> `/home/greg/.ketchup/patch-2.6.17.11.bz2.sign.partial'
Resolving www.kernel.org... 204.152.191.37, 204.152.191.5
Connecting to www.kernel.org|204.152.191.37|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 248 [application/pgp-signature]
100%[====================================>] 248 --.--K/s
22:21:14 (21.50 MB/s) - `/home/greg/.ketchup/patch-2.6.17.11.bz2.sign.partial' saved [248/248]
Verifying signature...
gpg: Signature made Wed Aug 23 15:01:04 2006 PDT using DSA key ID 517D0F0E
gpg: Good signature from "Linux Kernel Archives Verification Key >[email protected]<"
gpg: WARNING: This key is not certified with a trusted signature!
gpg: There is no indication that the signature belongs to the owner.
Primary key fingerprint: C75D C40A 11D7 AF88 9981 ED5B C86B A06A 517D 0F0E
Applying patch-2.6.17.11.bz2
Current directory renamed to /home/greg/linux/tmp/x/linux-2.6.17.11
This shows that
ketchup
automatically determined that
the newest stable version was 2.6.17.11, and downloaded the needed patch
files in order to get to that version.
It is highly recommended that you use
ketchup
if you
want to download any Linux kernel source trees. It takes all of the work
in finding where on the server the correct patch file is, and automatically
will apply the patch in the properly format, after checking that the
downloaded file is properly signed. Combine
ketchup
with
quilt
and you have a very powerful setup that
contains everything that you need in order to deal effectively with
kernel sources as a Linux kernel
developer.
