[PlanetCCRMA] planetccrma FC5 recompiling kernel problem

[Luis Garrido]

> ndiswrapper to compile and work. This is, I think, an incompatibility
> between the realtime preemption patch and ndiswrapper.

I use my own custom kernel with Planet/FC4, only Ingo's realtime
patches and a patch for undervolting my Pentium-M. I have no problems
using ndiswrapper with it.

Unfortunately the process of building a custom kernel is very involved
and requires deep knowledge of the hardware it is going to run under.

To anyone with already some experience that is willing to try it, what I do is:

1) Download and unpack a vanilla kernel.

2) Apply the patches you need (and cross your fingers that they are
compatible.) If not, you have two choices: review and try to fix the
incompatibilities or drop one of the patches.

3) Nowadays I know well what I need and make a .config from scratch,
but you can also try to fish around the net for someone that has done
it already for hardware similar to yours and has published his
.config. Use this as a starting config (the command "make oldconfig"
can help you if that .config doesn't adjust exactly to your source
tree.) This is the really difficult part that requires a lot of
research in your hardware.

4) For a RPM based distro you build "make binrpm-pkg" This will
produce a RPM with the kernel and modules ready to install in your
rpmbuild directory.

5) After installing this RPM don't forget to create the initrd image.
Run this command as root:

/sbin/mkinitrd /boot/initrd-<your-kernel-version>.img <your-kernel-version>

In my case that would be:

/sbin/mkinitrd /boot/initrd-2.6.16-rt9.img 2.6.16-rt9

6) Create an appropriate grub.conf entry. E.g.:

title FC4 : Custom 2.6.16
        root (hd0,4)
        kernel (hd0,0)/vmlinuz-2.6.16-rt9 ro root=LABEL=/1 reboot=b selinux=0
        initrd (hd0,0)/initrd-2.6.16-rt9.img

7) Now you can use that kernel build tree to build other non-stock
drivers like ndiswrapper or the realtime-lsm module.

If you are not familiar with some of the steps I describe, well, you
need to do a lot of homework before you try it. It takes quite some
time but pays back in the end.

Good luck,

Luis