Linux Kernel 2.4.21 Released Question

I noticed this - what would be involved in upgrading?
Would it be worth it?


Linux Kernel 2.4.21 Released


Posted by michael on Friday June 13, @01:20PM
from the load-average-increasing dept.
An anonymous reader writes "After > 6 months of waiting, 2.4.21 is here. Lots of cleanups, and a patch which gives a MAJOR boost to the 'feel' of the system under heavy disk IO, especially on IDE systems. As usual, available from your local kernel.org mirror or ftp.COUNTRYCODE.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4/! Tidbit: 'Current bandwidth utilization 131.72 Mbit/s '." See the Changelog for new stuff.[/quote]

KNOPPIX development team:

PLEASE! PLEASE! PLEASE! PLEASE! PLEASE!

include 2.4.21 in the next Knoppix release.

Thanks,

BR

Having installed Knoppix, is it possible / worth doing to upgrade my kernel?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tortoise

Having installed Knoppix, is it possible / worth doing to upgrade my kernel?

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It's possable.

If it aint broke, don't fix it ;)

It's possible, but it's a pain. It'd be much easier (for me at least) to just wait for Knoppix to include it and then do a HD-Install from it.

I need it for the usbnet drivers in 2.4.21 so I can communicate between Knoppix and my Zaurus.

BR

Klaus usually waits until the final release of a kernel before incorporating it into Knoppix. Now that 2.4.21 is officially out I suspect that it will be incorporated into the next Knoppix release - which should come sometime after LinuxTag.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tortoise

Having installed Knoppix, is it possible / worth doing to upgrade my kernel?

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--Yes. You can pretty much follow the instructions in my Linuxtips doc (see the "www" icon below).

Warning: ' make dep ' failed for me, but I just continued on and it's running now. I used the 2.4.20-xfs config file from Knoppix (it's in /boot) and changed a few things around. Included Reiserfs in the kernel so I didn't have to use mkinitrd.

--Detailed explanation follows (best as I can recollect from memory)

' cd /usr/src '
' time tar xjf /home/dave/dnld/linux-2.4.21.tar.bz2 ' == Extract the source

' cd linux-2.4.21 '
' make menuconfig '
( Load the file ' /boot/config-2.4.20-xfs ' when the menu interface comes up. Then change what you like. I saved to /usr/src/krnl2421.cfg )

" alias make='make -s -j 2 ' "
' make dep '
Errors reported:

Code:

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root /usr/src/linux-2.4.21 # make dep
make[1]: warning: jobserver unavailable: using -j1.  Add `+' to parent make rule.
md5sum: MD5 check failed for 'hfc_pci.c'
md5sum: can't open hfc_pci.
md5sum: can't open hfc_pci

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--Not knowing what to make of this, I changed a few more things in the menuconfig and tried again. Same error. I did an ' updatedb ' and ' locate hfc_pci ' and the file is ISDN-related. The changes having no result even after taking ISDN out of the kernel build, I continued on:

' time make bzImage '
System is 982 kB
warning: kernel is too big for standalone boot from floppy

--This is probably because I included Reiserfs instead of making it a module. But no big deal.

' mkdir /lib/modules/2.4.21 '
' cd /lib/modules '
' ln 2.4.21 preferred -sfn '
' cd - ' == Back to last dir

' time make modules && make modules_install '

--Again, an error came up about unresolved symbols, but I just ran ' depmod -a ' again and everything was Ok.

' cd /usr/src/linux-2.4.21 '
' cp arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.21 '
' cp System.map /boot/System.map-2.4.21 '
' cd /boot '
' ln System.map-2.4.21 System.map -sfn '

' jstar /etc/lilo.conf ' == Just to be safe, I left the default boot image stuff alone and added a second stanza:

Code:

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image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.21
        label=newkrn2421
        read-only
#      alias=2

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--Then I issued ' lilo -b /dev/fd0 ' to write the boot stuff to a floppy, and rebooted. Worked fine, so I made the new stanza the default boot in lilo.conf.

--Other things I had to redo:
+ Reran vmware-config.pl == Update VMWare 3.x
+ Redid NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-4363.run == Update NVidia X drivers.

--So far everything seems to be working fine. However, if you need to make an initrd, you're on your own. If you do it successfully, post to this thread and let us know how you did it.