LinuxBIOS SDK

3. Building LinuxBIOS Kernel

3.1 Preparation

3.1.1 Getting Kernel

The latest supported Linux Kernel is 2.4.17. It can be downloaded at http://www.kernel.org. Put the tarball in /usr/src/linuxbios/kernel.

3.1.2 Unpacking Kernel

Before unpacking the tarball, make sure /usr/src/linuxbios does not exist. If it does, rename it to something else. Then unpack the tarball:
$ tar zxf kernel/linux-2.4.17.tar.gz
$ mv linux linux-2.4.17-linuxbios_1
$ ln -sf linux-2.4.17-linuxbios_1 linux

Edit /usr/src/linuxbios/linux/Makefile, then look for EXTRAVERSION. Change the value to -linuxbios_1.

3.1.3 Patching Kernel

New patches can be found at http://www.cwlinux.com/downloads. Put patches in /usr/src/linuxbios/kernel-patches. To install patches:

$ patch -p1 -d /usr/src/linuxbios/linux < /usr/src/linuxbios/kernel-patches/patchXX

For gzip format,
$ gzip -dc /usr/src/linuxbios/kernel-patches/patchXX.gz | patch -p1 -d /usr/src/linuxbios/linux

For bzip format,
$ bzip2 -dc /usr/src/linuxbios/kernel-patches/patchXX.bz2 | patch -p1 -d /usr/src/linuxbios/linux

3.2 Configuring Kernel

There are 3 common ways to configure kernel.

"make config"	Configure kernel through command line interface
"make menuconfig"	Configure kernel through console UI
"make config"	Configure kernel through X GUI

SDK provides a sample config file to simplify the kernel configure process. The sample configure file contains the necessary kernel options for enabling mtd DiskOnChip support and nftl support. It is located at /usr/src/linuxbios/config/linux-2.4.17.config. To use the kernel options:

$ cp /usr/src/linuxbios/config/linux-2.4.17.config /usr/src/linuxbios/linux/.config
$ cd /usr/src/linuxbios/linux
$ make oldconfig

Note: Bt default, process has been set to 386 for compatibility. You may want

3.3 Compiling Kernel

To compile the kernel,
$ make INSTALL_MOD_PATH=/usr/src/linuxbios/buildroot/root dep vmlinux modules modules_install

It will create a kernel image /usr/src/linuxbios/linux/vmlinux and all modules will be installed at /usr/src/linuxbios/buildroot/root/lib/modules/2.4.17-linuxbios_1.