Brandon W. King's Blog » kernel http://www.brandonking.net/blog Blogging about Python, Bioinformatics, Programming, System Administration, Cognitive Science, Philosophy and Life Wed, 09 Dec 2009 01:24:43 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 Dell Vostro 400 – Ubuntu/Kubuntu Linux http://www.brandonking.net/blog/2008/02/22/dell-vostro-400-ubuntukubuntu-linux/ http://www.brandonking.net/blog/2008/02/22/dell-vostro-400-ubuntukubuntu-linux/#comments Fri, 22 Feb 2008 22:42:00 +0000 Brandon W. King http://blog.brandonking.net/?p=35 I was able to get a Dell Vostro 400 to work with Kubuntu 8.4 Alpha 4 LiveCD. I used the installer and it resized the Windows XP partition just fine… What I did to get this to work is written below:

Okay, SATA cdroms and Linux don’t seem to be mixing very well… at least not with Ubuntu/Kubuntu 7.10. If you pop in one of the live cds, it will likely give you an IO Error when you select any item on the live cd boot menu.

As it turns out, that problem is fixed in Ubuntu/Kubuntu 8.4… but it’s not out yet being Feb 22nd (Release date scheduled for April). But, the live cd works with 8.4 Alpha 4 (looks like Alpha 5 came out today), which can be found here: https://wiki.kubuntu.org/HardyHeron/.

When I booted the live cd, the screen went blank… The next time I booted off the live cd, I choose F6, and removed “quiet splash” from the kernel arguments.

At some point you might run into an error like:

Feb 22 21:55:19 localhost ata2: failed to recover some devices, retrying in 5 secs

If this happens add the kernel argument irqpoll and it should bypass/fix the problem (not sure which; it just worked).

To add the irqpoll option in the live cd:

  1. Select F6
  2. Remove “quite splash”
  3. Add “irqpoll”

To add the irqpoll option to grub (once installed):

  1. Replace # defoptions=quiet splash with # defoptions=irqpoll

I am in a bit of a hurry during this post today, so if you have any questions or would like me to expand on something, just post a comment.

]]> http://www.brandonking.net/blog/2008/02/22/dell-vostro-400-ubuntukubuntu-linux/feed/ 0 Custom Debian Linux Kernel Debian package w/ initrd http://www.brandonking.net/blog/2006/12/06/custom-debian-linux-kernel-debian-package-w-initrd/ http://www.brandonking.net/blog/2006/12/06/custom-debian-linux-kernel-debian-package-w-initrd/#comments Wed, 06 Dec 2006 23:11:00 +0000 Brandon W. King http://blog.brandonking.net/?p=21 My attempt to build a new Debian Linux Kernel was thwarted by initrd! Thanks to Diane Trout mentioning that when using make-kpkg, to build a kernel image, doesn’t automatically make an initrd image. I investigated further and found out if you use –initrd, it will automatically generate the initrd image.

Below are the instructions for building a custom Debian Linux Kernel Debian package:

1) Install the following Debian packages (Need access to Universe repository for Ubuntu):

  • kernel-package
  • initrd-tools

2) Get the kernel source (choose version, I used 2.6.17):

apt-get install linux-source-2.6.17

3) Decompress /usr/src/linux-source-2.6.17.tar.bz2

4) cd /usr/src/linux-source-2.6.17

5) Switch to root if you haven’t done so already (sudo -s)

6) type ‘make menuconfig’ to configure your kernel

It may require installing libncurses5 and libcurses5-dev.

7) type ‘make-kpkg –revision 1.0 –append-to-version -custom –initrd kernel_image’

Feel free to change the revision number or and use something other than custom (or omit –revision and –append-to-version to use defaults).
8) type ‘cd ..’

9) dpkg –install linux-image-2.6.17-custom_1.0_amd64.deb

Except using the .deb package name which was generated on your computer.

10) Reboot and enjoy!

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