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Upgrade to kernel v2.0
Greetings fellow beings and compatible entities!
This weekend I upgraded linux from 1.3.20 (from a slackware 3.00
distribution) to 2.0 (kerneld kick ass!!!).
The whole procedure took me about 6 hours, but I did manage to
re-read a Sandman graphic novel, during that time. If you have something
faster than a 486DX2 w/8Meg RAM, and don't repeat some of my errors
then you'll probably be able to do this in half the time or less.
Things you'll need:
-Kernel and modules (duh)
-PPP deamon 2.2.0f
-SysVinit
-ld.so, GCC, libc, procps, binutils, patched make - I don't know how
many ofthese I really needed to upgrade but why not.
-A Sandman GN (House of Dolls is very good).
Try http://www.cviog.uga.edu/LinuxBleed.html, it has a list and links
of all the places needed to get all the stuff (this info was taken from the
changes file in the kernel 2.0 sources).
Problems? Not really. Reading all the READMEs is a must and doing a
tar -tvzf before a tar -xvzf (I don't use gzip -cd xxx | tar, so shoot
me!) is also highly recomended. For example the kernel source tree is
arranged under linux/ in the tar file, while in the slackware distribution
linux is a symbolic link to the kernel tree (with names such as linux-1.3.20,
etc.).
Untaring the file as is into /usr/src would really mess things up.
It's nescesary to rm the linux simlink, untar, mv linux linux-2.0 and
recreate the linux link. Speaking of links, another problem is that at least
for (my) 1.3.20 kernel source, the asm simlink in /usr/include pointed to
/usr/src/linux/include/asm instead of /usr/src/linux/include/asm-i386
as per kernel 2.0, it's quite easy to miss this step when installing the
kernel (until you try to compile sysvinit that is).
I found only one problem/bug (at least for now) I have two accounts
set to user id 0, root and another one (yeah I know, you can shoot me for
this as well). It happens to be that the password for both accounts started
with '@'. When I rebooted agetty wouldn't accept my password, I had to
boot from a floopy and edit etc/passwd to get access. Funny thing is when
I changed the password so it starts with a char other than @, it all worked
fine. I've yet to investigate this at lenght, but suggestions are welcome (note
I DID boot with the older kernel to no avail before booting from floopies,
so forget what you were going to say :) ).
Well, that's about it, hope this message helps someone. If you're thinking of
moving to kernel v2.0 and don't know how and are too shy or afraid to
post messages to the list, e-mail me and I'll try to answer to the best of
my ability.
Ahh, oh yes, one last thing do make sure you copy the zImage to
somewhere BEFORE 'make clean' unlike someone I know who had to
recompile the kernel again because of this :)
Eli Algranti <OR17367@elbit.co.il>