How to compile the Linux kernel

                 When  I  joined  C-DAC(Formerly  NCST)  Bangalore, as a
            technical associate(TA) , beside learning about the project,
            which  I'm  part  of, the task assigned to me was to write a
            loadable kernel module(LKM). As  a  part  of  that  task,  I
            wanted  to  upgrade  the  kernel on my machine to the latest
            one. I started to look around for the material and books for
            help.  In  all  these  efforts Google(http://www.google.com)
            played an important role; also our library always proves  to
            be  one of the best for that matter. After some early work I
            could find out following steps to compile the linux kernel

            1    Download the Linux kernel from http://www.kernel.org

            2    Untar the tarball using either "tar  -xzf"  for  ".tgz"
                 file or "tar -xjf" command for ".tar.bz2" file.

            3    Go the kernel directory

            4    make  [config/menuconfig/defconfig/xconfig]  This  will
                 invoke either an editor to  let  you  configure  kernel
                 parameters  or may ask questions in an interactive mode
                 in case of "make config". At the end  of  configuration
                 you'll  have  ".config" file written in the same direc-
                 tory. It's not reccomended you to edit this file.

            5    make bzImage: This will start  the  actual  compilation
                 process  and  at  the  end  of  this  step  you'll have
                 "vmlinuz" file ready, which is your kernel image.

            6    make modules: This will  compile  the  loadable  kernel
                 modules source files to generate the kernel object(.ko)
                 files in case  of  Linux  kernel-2.6.x  and  object(.o)
                 files for the kernels prior to kernel-2.6.x

            7    make modules_install: This command needs the root priv-
                 ileges, so you gotta do the root login before executing
                 this command. As this command will create the directory
                 "linux-" under "/lib/modules"  and  copy
                 all  the  object  files and dirvers generated so far in
                 this directory.

            8    make install: This  command  will  make  the  necessary
                 changes  in the boot loader configuration file so that,
                 when you reboot the system you'll  see  the  option  to
                 boot into this freshly compiled Linux kernel.

            Note:

            .    Always  keep  a  running  kernel image untouched, so in
                 case if new kernel image is unable  to  boot,  you  can
                 always  boot  with  the  old  kernel and do the nessary
                 changes.

            .    Also do not forget to read the kernel documentation.






                                                               ...PJP