Re: Maybe my frequent kernel building could be of some help to the community? And how to build?

[Piotr Hosowicz <piotr@hosowicz.com>]

Piotr Hosowicz wrote:
> Randy Dunlap wrote:
>> On Thu, 25 Mar 2010 10:29:35 -0700 Randy Dunlap wrote:
>>
>>> On 03/18/10 08:40, Randy Dunlap wrote:
>>>> On Tue, 16 Mar 2010 12:24:35 -0700 Randy Dunlap wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On 03/16/10 12:02, Piotr Hosowicz wrote:
>>>>>> Hello,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I own quite strong PC, 4 core Pentium. I recently started to build my
>>>>>> kernel frequently, whenever I see a new patch on kernel.org I build
>>>>>> again. Bothers me that I do it only for doing it. Maybe it could 
>>>>>> be of
>>>>>> some help to the community? And if so, what would be more 
>>>>>> appreciated -
>>>>>> linux-next patched kernel or gitN patched kernel? And how should I
>>>>>> configure the kernel for this purpose? I am afraid of putting all the
>>>>>> options on, yesterday I tried to put everything on as a module plus I
>>>>>> tinkered with some other options that seemed innocent. The kernel was
>>>>>> built but could not boot, saying that there was a problem with the 
>>>>>> root
>>>>>> device, it could not recoginze /dev/sda2, which is my correct root
>>>>>> device. I did not investigate much and reverted to working kernel.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Thanks in advance for your remarks.
>>>>> Many linux-next builds are done daily: see
>>>>>   http://kisskb.ellerman.id.au/kisskb/branch/9/
>>>>>
>>>>> and then I do 25 x86_32 randconfigs and 25 x64_64 randconfigs
>>>>> daily and fix most build errors that I find in them.
>>>>> (I am also using a quad-core PC with a cron job that finds the
>>>>> next day's linux-next, downloads it, and does 50 builds.)
>>>>>
>>>>> You are welcome to do the same or test mainline (with daily
>>>>> builds) and/or Andrew Morton's mmotm patchset.
>>>>
>>>> One thing that you could do that no one focuses on is building
>>>> with some kconfig symbols disabled (ones that are typically enabled),
>>>> such as CONFIG_SMP=n, CONFIG_SYSFS=n, CONFIG_PROC_FS=n, CONFIG_PM=n,
>>>> CONFIG_PCI=n, CONFIG_BLOCK=n, CONFIG_NET=n, CONFIG_INET=n (but latter
>>>> with CONFIG_NET=y), CONFIG_HOTPLUG=n.  Not all of these at the same 
>>>> time,
>>>> just various/random combinations of them.
>>> and CONFIG_SYSRQ=n  (just found some errors due to this one)
>>
>> and CONFIG_INPUT randomly enabled/disabled
>>
>> Basically any major subsystem that can be enabled/disabled should be
>> tested.
> 
> Randy, but as for now (please find my messages) I do not know how to 
> randomly generate .config, I do not understand how make oldconfig works. 
> So I am stopped.

Randy, sorry, I just now saw, that You advised to use:

yes '' | make oldconfig

I got it wrong, and used - to my confusion:

yes | make oldconfig

I'll get to it tommorrow.

Godd night.

Piotr Hosowicz

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