2. Preparations

2.1. Making a backup boot diskette

Before you make a new kernel the first thing to do is make a boot disk for the kernel you're running. This way, if anything gets screwed up you'll be able to boot the machine and fix it. Grab a floppy disk you don't mind erasing and do this (as the root user):

bash:~# mkboot path_to_kernel

Replace path_to_kernel with the appropriate information, such as "/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-bf2.4" (if you installed Woody with the 2.4 kernel).

2.2. What to install

We will be working with Debian 3.0r1 (Woody revision 1); you will need the following packages:

  1. gcc

  2. kernel-package

  3. kernel-source-2.4.18 (or whatever kernel sources you will be using)

  4. libc6-dev

  5. tk8.0 or tk8.1 or tk8.3

  6. libncurses5-dev

  7. fakeroot

  8. bin86 (for building 2.2.x kernels on PCs)

You can install these packages by doing (as the root user):

bash:~# apt-get install gcc kernel-package kernel-source-2.4.18 libc6-dev tk8.3 libncurses5-dev fakeroot

Installing these packages will cause several other packages to be installed to satisfy dependencies.

Note

If you're compiling a 2.2 series kernel for the PC architecture (machines with AMD processors are PCs, but not Macs or Alphas) you'll need the bin86 package.

You can use any version of the kernel sources you wish; I chose 2.4.18 because it's the most current in Woody. Debian maintainers have done an excellent job packaging kernel sources into .deb files, and I recommend you use those rather than other source packages. The only reason I can see to use other kernel source packages is to get hardware support not available in Debian.