On Sat, 26 Aug 2000, John Summerfield wrote:
>Date: Sat, 26 Aug 2000 08:43:33 +0800
>From: John Summerfield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>Subject: Re: Unresolved symbols on kernel rebuild
>
>> Another piece of advice, in general to anyone building a
>> kernel. Before starting, each time, either untar fresh kernel
>> source, or do a "make distclean" before all else. "distclean" is
>> the 'cleanest' clean in the top level makefile, even moreso than
>> the commonly used "make clean" and "make mrproper". I use
>> distclean every time as a first step, and it minimalizes the
>> chance of trouble significantly.
>
>distclean requires you reconfigure from scratch; seems a sure way to create
>more problems.
I don't see how. distclean attempts to flush all junk out of the
kernel source tree that wasn't there when it was untarred. In
other words, distclean is almost if not completely identical to
untarring a brand new kernel tarball. It's intent is to clean up
the source code tree prior to creating a tarball for
distribution. Can't get much cleaner than that unless there are
new make targets since I last looked.
>I'm content to believe the kernel developers; one needs do no more than
> make xconfig # menuconfig and config are alternative targets
> make bzImage # there are alternative targets here too
> make modules
> make install
> make modules_install
You're missing "make dep" after "xconfig". dep is important.
Other than that, the rest is correct for a clean source
tree. After you've build the source, or patched, or otherwise
messed with the code, it is no longer clean and might not build
correctly. The documentation says to use "make mrproper",
however that doesn't mean that the other targets in the make file
are not for anyone else but Linus to use. distclean just does a
"make mrproper" and then it also deletes any ".orig", ".rej", and
various editor's backup files such as "*~", etc..
I had an instance where my kernel wouldn't build after using
mrproper. Someone recommended I use "distclean" instead and the
problem went away. I read the makefile afterwards and
experimented with the different targets. Although they are
undocumented mostly, they are there for people to use, the
Makefile itself being the documentation.
I've not seen any kernel developer say "don't use make distclean
or you'll have problems".
>To upgrade (patch) the kernel, you start out by applying the patch (there are
>alternative ways there, read the documentation), and you can make oldconfig
>rather than make xconfig to answer only any new questions that have arisen.
Yes, oldconfig is useful as well. I do it the hard and lazy way
myself and use menuconfig, then load the saved config file
in... oldconfig can save time though, and is especially useful
in scripts.
Take care,
TTYL
--
Mike A. Harris Linux advocate
Computer Consultant GNU advocate
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