Obtaining 2.6.8-1.541 source code

[Matthew Miller]

On Mon, Sep 13, 2004 at 10:42:29PM -0700, Nick Coghlan wrote:
> The 541 src RPM from fedora.redhat.com drops a vanilla tarball, and a 
> collection of patch & config files into /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES, but 
> doesn't seem to give any guidance on combining those into a given kernel 
> version. I would assume it is important to at least apply the patches in 
> the correct order (which may or may not be alphabetical order).
> Am I missing something obvious here?

I dunno if it's obvious if you're not expecting it, but: source RPMs don't
work like binary RPMs. They contain the files from which binary RPMs are
generated, and when you "install" one, instead of putting files into the
system's RPM database, it just dumps them into your RPM build area. And
since you haven't configured it otherwise, it uses the systemwide default.

The default, it turns out is bad (and basically there due to a long
legacy). What you want to do is set up a buildtree in your own home
directory -- there's excellent instructions here:
<http://www.rpm.org/hintskinks/buildtree/>. Then, install the source RPM
*not as root*, and edit the spec file to include your local patches, and
rebuild. Voila, a new binary RPM kernel package which you can install.


-- 
Matthew Miller           mattdm at mattdm.org        <http://www.mattdm.org/>
Boston University Linux      ------>                <http://linux.bu.edu/>