lfs-book/chapter06/kernel-inst.xml

<sect2><title>&nbsp;</title><para>&nbsp;</para></sect2>

<sect2>
<title>Installation of the kernel headers</title>

<para>We won't be compiling a new kernel yet -- we'll do that when we have
finished the installation of all the packages. But as some packages need the
kernel header files, we're going to unpack the kernel archive now, set it up
and copy the header files so they can be found by these packages.</para>

<para>It is important to note that the files in the kernel source directory
are not owned by <emphasis>root</emphasis>. Whenever you unpack a package as
user <emphasis>root</emphasis> (like we do here inside chroot), the files end
up having the user and group IDs of whatever they were on the packager's
computer. This is usually not a
problem for any other package you install because you remove the source
tree after the installation. But the Linux kernel source tree is often kept
around for a long time, so there's a chance that whatever user ID the packager
used will be assigned to somebody on your machine and then that person would
have write access to the kernel source.</para>

<para>In light of this, you might want to run <userinput>chown -R 0:0</userinput>
on the <filename>linux-&kernel-version;</filename> directory
to ensure all files are owned by user <emphasis>root</emphasis>.</para>

<para>Prepare for header installation:</para>

<para><screen><userinput>make mrproper</userinput></screen></para>

<para>This ensures that the kernel tree is absolutely clean. The kernel team
recommends that this command be issued prior to <emphasis>each</emphasis> kernel
compilation. You shouldn't rely on the source tree being clean after
untarring.</para>

<para>Create the <filename>include/linux/version.h</filename> file:</para>

<para><screen><userinput>make include/linux/version.h</userinput></screen></para>

<para>Create the platform-specific <filename>include/asm</filename>
symlink:</para>

<para><screen><userinput>make symlinks</userinput></screen></para>

<para>Install the platform specific-header files:</para>

<para><screen><userinput>cp -HR include/asm /usr/include
cp -R include/asm-generic /usr/include</userinput></screen></para>

<para>Install the cross-platform kernel header files:</para>

<para><screen><userinput>cp -R include/linux /usr/include</userinput></screen></para>

<para>There are a few kernel header files which make use of the
<filename>autoconf.h</filename> header file. Since we do not yet configure the
kernel, we need to create this file ourselves in order to avoid compilation
failures. Create an empty <filename>autoconf.h</filename> file:</para>

<para><screen><userinput>touch /usr/include/linux/autoconf.h</userinput></screen></para>

</sect2>