[NBLUG/talk] Debian and kernel upgrades

troy fryman at sonic.net
Mon Oct 27 11:53:01 PST 2003


On Sun, Oct 26, 2003 at 04:46:05PM -0800, Steve Johnson wrote:
> Can you upgrade the kernel via apt-get or is it just best to download 
> the source for kernel.org and compile by hand?

The "Debian Way" for custom kernel upgrades is via the kernel-package package.

$ apt-cache show kernel-package
Description: A utility for building Linux kernel related Debian packages.
 This package provides the capability to create a debian kernel-image
 package by just running make-kpkg kernel_image in a kernel source
 directory tree.  It can also package the relevant kernel headers into
 a kernel-headers package. In general, this package is very useful if
 you need to create a custom kernel, if, for example, the default
 kernel does not support some of your hardware, or you wish a leaner,
 meaner kernel.  It also scripts the steps that need be taken to
 compile the kernel, which is quite convenient (forgetting a crucial
 step once was the initial motivation for this package). Please look at
 /usr/share/doc/kernel-package/Rationale.gz for a full list of advantages
 of this package.

Out of laziness/familiarity, I still do the old 4 step make process, however.

-troy




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