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

[Piotr Hosowicz <piotr@hosowicz.com>]

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.

Regards,

Piotr Hosowicz

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