[wplug] redhat kernel woes

[James O'Kane]

On Thu, 19 Jun 2003, Vanco, Donald wrote:
> 	An interesting anecdote - I've taken the RHCE class twice - for 6.2
> and 7.3 - and neither time did the process for kernel compilation follow
> these steps.....  I had always thought that "make oldconfig" was merely a
> means to generate a base .config file that represents the running kernel.
> Apparently, it's much more pivotal in some way.

So the question is why a make something-config step is needed? If you've 
done a make mrproper, the symlink include/asm is deleted, and a make 
fooconfig creates it again.


 
> 	Out of insatiable curiosity I did the following:
> make mrproper
> make oldconfig
> (copied off .config file)
> make mrproper
> (copied template .config from "configs")
> make oldconfig

>From what I can tell, make oldconfig keeps the options currently in 
.config. If it comes across a new option that isn't set, it will stop and 
prompt you. Try taking a .config from a 2.4.18 and try oldconfig with 
2.4.20. (I'm assuming that will demonstrate this, I haven't tested)



> 	For the curious, I also asked:
> >> 4) "make pdfdocs" has always ralphed on me, telling me I need to
> >> install DocBook Stylesheets.  What are they and where can I get
> >> them?  I've not seen a RH package that directly correlates in
> >> name.....  Is it the sgml stuff? (I have sgml-common installed)
> 
> 	...and got another somewhat cryptic answer: 
> > there's a package, but if I make the kernel rpm require it it drags
> > in half the distro ;)


I think he is saying that if he includes make pdfdocs in the kernel rpm 
build process, find-requires will claim the kernel.rpm requires half of 
the packages. Such as whatever package has the DocBook Stylesheets, and 
the packages it requires.

That DocBook StyleSheets error comes from /usr/bin/db2pdf not being
installed. It lives in docbook-utils-pdf-0.6.11-2.noarch.rpm. I dont' have
time to follow it's dependancies, but that should give you a start.

-james