On Saturday 31 October 2009 20:09:37 Harry Putnam wrote: > Nikos Chantziaras <[email protected]> writes: > > The link is created only if you have the "symlink" USE flag enabled. > > > > Also, "Gentoo requires that the [...] symbolic link points to the > > sources of the kernel you are running" is not entirely correct. It is > > required only when you want to build something against that > > kernel. > > > > . . . . Obviously, you need to create the symlink if you want to build > > the newly installed kernel, even though the system is still running an > > older one. > > Why is that obvious? That's what seemed confusing to me. > > Nothing about creating it with USE=symlin, eselect, or by hand is a > problem. Or hard to follow, and I've always just done it by hand. >
Nikos is being kind to the document writers :-) In fact, the documentation is flat out wrong - there is no requirement for the symlink to point to the currently running kernel. It must point to the kernel sources you want to *configure* or use for an emerge that installs a kernel driver. For instance, you might be running 2.6.31-r4 and also have 2.6.31-r3 installed. To install nvidia-drivers, you must build it *twice* - against each kernel you want to use it with (nvidia-drivers builds and installs a kernel driver into /lib/modules/<kernel version>) USE="symlink" just runs ln -sfn /usr/src/<new_version> linux at the end of the merge , no further magic. It's purely a convenience thing, you can just as easily do that step yourself -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
