Using make-kpkg to create debian packages of custom kernels

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Description:

Kernel is a specific part of your Debian GNU/Linux system: it is essential because it handles directly your hardware and provides all the low-level features. Debian has some kernel packages but there are generic and may not fit your needs. Besides that, handling the kernel without packaging may not be a good choice.

Debian provides a tool called make-kpkg that you can find in the kernel-package package. The purpose of this tool is to create debian packages from your custom kernel: headers, sources, images, etc. the bad side of this is the documentation which is not clear at all.

What I am badly trying to sell you:

As I have many kernels to compile and use every day I made my custom script handle all that packages. The features are:

works with vanilla or custom kernel sources
handle patches and external modules
handle revision and version for each kernel release
working as non-root user

For example, if I want to compile a kernel for a machine called miranda, I just have to provide:

the kernel sources (which may be shared with other machines)
the name of the machine (miranda)
the revision (2 for example)
the list of patches to apply (optional)
the list of external modules to add (optional)
the architecture to use (optional)

How does it work ?

It is very simple. First you have to create a working directory anywhere (let's say ~/kernel for example). In that directory you must create or install:

the make-kpkg.sh script
a kernel directory containing tarballs of kernel sources named like linux-2.4.20.tar.bz2.
a modules directory containing tarballs of external modules (as provided by debian packages, copy them from /usr/src/).
a patches directory containing patches spreaded in kernel version subdirectories like 2.4.20/low-latency.patch.

I am not using patches as provided by Debian packages because I am using a lots of patches which are not (and will not be) packaged. The patches are applied with -p1 switch so you may have to adapt them if needed (the patchutils package may be usefull for this task).

To create the revision 2 of 2.4.20 kernel for miranda the instructions are:

create a miranda directory (in ~/kernel)
create a subdirectory with the pattern <kernel version>-<revision> like 2.4.20-2 for the 2nd revision of 2.4.20.
in this directory (~/kernel/miranda/2.4.20-2/):
- copy a config file to start with (optional)
- create a list-patches file (optional) containing the list of patches (one per line) to apply to the kernel sources (only the patch filename as provided in the patches/kernel-version/ directory)
- create a list-modules file (optional) containing the list of modules (one per line) to compile (as provided in the modules directory but without the .tar.gz extension)
- create a arch file (optional) to change default architecture (um for example if you want to compile a UML kernel).
always in the directory ~/kernel/miranda/2.4.20-2/: type sh ../../make-kpkg.sh and everything should compile automagically !

Example of content of the working directory:

tof@chiral:~/work/kernel$ ls -Rl
.:
total 32
drwxr-sr-x    4 tof      tof          4096 2002-12-18 09:56 chiral/
-rw-r--r--    1 tof      tof          2497 2002-12-29 13:50 make-kpkg.sh
drwxr-sr-x    2 tof      tof          4096 2002-12-29 13:01 kernel/
drwxr-sr-x    2 tof      tof          4096 2002-12-14 15:13 modules/
drwxr-sr-x    4 tof      tof          4096 2002-12-14 17:53 patches/

./chiral:
total 8
drwxr-sr-x    2 tof      tof          4096 2002-12-18 10:05 2.4.19-2/
drwxr-sr-x    2 tof      tof          4096 2002-12-15 12:09 2.4.20-1/

./chiral/2.4.19-2:
total 5896
-rw-r--r--    1 tof      tof         25060 2002-11-01 16:42 config
-rw-r--r--    1 tof      tof          6410 2002-11-01 18:30 device3dfx-module-2.4.19-chiral.2_chiral.2+2001.07.28_i386.deb
-rw-r--r--    1 tof      tof         69240 2002-11-01 18:30 i2c-2.4.19-chiral.2_2.6.4-2+chiral.2_i386.deb
-rw-r--r--    1 tof      tof       3968176 2002-11-01 18:30 kernel-headers-2.4.19-chiral.2_chiral.2_i386.deb
-rw-r--r--    1 tof      tof       1807846 2002-11-01 18:30 kernel-image-2.4.19-chiral.2_chiral.2_i386.deb
-rw-r--r--    1 tof      tof            26 2002-12-14 18:12 list-modules
-rw-r--r--    1 tof      tof           101 2002-12-14 17:49 list-patches
-rw-r--r--    1 tof      tof        130666 2002-11-01 18:31 lm-sensors-2.4.19-chiral.2_2.6.4-3+chiral.2_i386.deb

./chiral/2.4.20-1:
total 2020
-rw-r--r--    1 tof      tof         23636 2002-12-14 21:12 config
-rw-r--r--    1 tof      tof          6312 2002-12-14 20:51 device3dfx-module-2.4.20-chiral.1_chiral.1+2001.07.28_i386.deb
-rw-r--r--    1 tof      tof         68936 2002-12-14 20:51 i2c-2.4.20-chiral.1_2.6.5-2+chiral.1_i386.deb
-rw-r--r--    1 tof      tof       1812774 2002-12-14 20:51 kernel-image-2.4.20-chiral.1_chiral.1_i386.deb
-rw-r--r--    1 tof      tof            26 2002-12-14 18:12 list-modules
-rw-r--r--    1 tof      tof           101 2002-12-14 17:49 list-patches
-rw-r--r--    1 tof      tof        129524 2002-12-14 20:51 lm-sensors-2.4.20-chiral.1_2.6.4-3+chiral.1_i386.deb

./kernel:
total 52280
-rw-r--r--    1 tof      tof      26042494 2002-12-29 13:09 linux-2.4.19.tar.bz2
-rw-r--r--    1 tof      tof      27421046 2002-12-14 14:16 linux-2.4.20.tar.bz2

./modules:
total 660
-rw-r--r--    1 tof      tof         18733 2002-12-14 15:13 device3dfx.tar.gz
-rw-r--r--    1 tof      tof        132906 2002-12-15 12:11 i2c.tar.gz
-rw-r--r--    1 tof      tof        511812 2002-12-14 15:13 lm-sensors.tar.gz

./patches:
total 8
drwxr-sr-x    2 tof      tof          4096 2002-12-29 12:54 2.4.19/
drwxr-sr-x    2 tof      tof          4096 2002-12-14 17:49 2.4.20/

./patches/2.4.19:
total 2028
-rw-------    1 tof      tof       1028963 2002-12-14 17:53 uml-patch-2.4.19-37
-rw-------    1 tof      tof       1036139 2002-12-29 12:54 uml-patch-2.4.19-45

./patches/2.4.20:
total 212
-rw-r--r--    1 tof      tof          4194 2002-12-14 14:08 ext3_data_journal_unmount_bug.patch
-rw-r--r--    1 tof      tof         49314 2002-12-14 16:00 low-latency.patch
-rw-r--r--    1 tof      tof        109537 2002-12-14 14:57 lvm-1.0.6.patch
-rw-r--r--    1 tof      tof         17733 2002-12-14 18:06 rio.patch
-rw-------    1 tof      tof         15583 2002-12-14 17:49 uml-host-skas3.patch