Re: Compiling 2.6 kernel questions

[Alex <mysqlstudent@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

> The version of glibc installed on the build system has no effect upon
> the resulting kernel.
>
> glibc tends to be quite independent of the kernel version. For the
> most part, you can still run binaries linked against libc.so.5 on a
> 2.6 kernel.

That's also what I thought, however, I got a kernel panic booting the
kernel I built, and my inclination was that it was caused by glibc-2.3
being installed on the system. It said something along the lines of
this:

init[1] segfault at ffffe32c ip b7800319 sp bf931cb0 error 4 in
ld-2.3.2.so[b77fe000+15000]

Should I look elsewhere for the cause of this, or is it possible that
it's related to an old glibc?

>> - Is it necessary to compile the IDE driver and ext2/3 filesystem
>> driver into the kernel, or can that also be a module?
>
> If you build either as a module, you need to use initrd or initramfs.

So it can be made available as a module within an initrd?

>> If so, and I put
>> it in initrd,. how is it accessed? Isn't it a catch-22 without having
>> support to access the very ramdisk that has the support that's
>> necessary to access it?
>
> To use initrd, the device driver and file system have to be built into
> the kernel.

Hmm... Are you saying here that it can't be loaded as a module, but
instead must be compiled into the kernel?

> 2.6 kernels support initramfs, which doesn't require a
> separate device driver or filesystem module (the code is always built
> into the kernel). See Documentation/filesystems/ramfs-rootfs-initramfs.txt
> for details.
>
>> If this can be done, where can I find info on the steps?
>
> Unless you're particularly short for space, start by building a kernel
> with IDE and ext2 built in, and deal with initrd/initramfs later.

Not short on space, but would like to build a kernel package that can
be installed on multiple systems with different hardware
configurations.

I'd like to make it as modular and portable as possible. The only
thing I can be assured of is that it will always use ext3.

Thanks again. You've helped me quite a bit over the years, and I sure
appreciate it.

Best regards,
Alex
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