[wplug] I'm a Linux whimp (need kernel help)

[Chester R. Hosey]

On Sat, 2005-08-13 at 17:20 -0600, Vance Kochenderfer wrote:
> Zachary Uram <netrek at gmail.com> wrote:
> > where does debian store the kernel config?
> 
> Don't know specifically about Debian, but many Linux systems have the
> config used to build the kernel available in /proc/config.gz (visible
> only to root).

Everyone laugh at Debian now -- as I recall 'testing' still uses a 2.4
kernel, which I don't believe provides /proc/config[.gz] support.

I've been rolling my own kernel since the days when documentation still
read "The first thing you'll want to do after getting a distribution
installed is to recompile your kernel", so it's not been a hindrance for
me personally. I only use a vendor-supplied kernel if using a vendor-
supplied kernel is required for support.

You did bring up a good point, though -- it's a great (!) idea to
enable /proc/config[.gz] while configuring your kernel. If you end up
losing the configuration for a bootable kernel, you can still retrieve
it later if needed. I believe that there's even a script to extract this
information from a non-running kernel if you built it with /proc/config
support.

Chet