How to build a kernel

First of all I built a virtual machine on my desktop using vmware server. I then installed Debian 5 on it using the net install ISO to make a minimal install. I didn’t set it up with any roles i.e. desktop.
Once booted install SSH. Logging on as root and enter:

apt-get install ssh

After this point you can access the vm with putty and copy files to and from the vm with Winscp. You could install a samba server of ftp but I am not going to cover this here.

Now we need to install all the software needed to allow us to compile kernel sources. This is done using the following command:

apt-get install gcc-4.3 make wget bzip2 build-essential

These tools are as follows:

• gcc-4.3 the GNU C Compiler
• make the tool that runs the compile script
• wget a tool to download files from http servers
• bzip2 a compression tool
• build-essentials tools and libraries used to compile

Once this is complete you have a system that is setup to compile kernels and driver modules.
We now need to get some files from the altiris system.
First we need the config file from the altiris Linux boot environment. The config file holds all the settings that were used to build the kernel that is used in the current build and is a good starting place for a new kernel.
To get it we need to send a job down to a machine to boot the Linux environment and run the following script:

cp /proc/config.gz /mnt/ds
gzip -d /mnt/ds/config.gz

This will copy the config file from the boot environment and put it into the root of your deployment share.

Now we also need the rootfs file. This file is like a virtual disk that holds the file system for the Linux been environment we may need to add some files to this or delete as needed. This file is located at \bootwiz\platforms\linux\x86\base\rootfs.

Now you have these files copy them over to the vm using Winscp and place them in the /root directory.

Now we need to get hold of the source code for the kernel that we want to use. If you just want to make new driver modules you need the same version as is used in your existing build (currently 2.6.18.8).
you can download the kernel from here you need a kernel that follows the name linux-2.6.**.*.tar.bz2 it should be about 40mb + in size. I have had good results with 2.6.24.7. Once you have selected the kernel you need right click on it and copy the link location. Then go to your putty and enter the following commands:

cd /usr/src
wget http://url to file

Instead of having the type “http://url to file your can right click and your copied location will be pasted in saving your figures. press enter and your kernel will be downloaded.
Once finished you need to extract the kernel from the archive as bellow:

tar -jxf linux-2.6.**.*.tar.bz2

This will extract the source to a folder of the same name.
To make life easier I would delete the archive now but its up to you.
Now we need to move the kernel source to a folder called linux this is for compatibility with making new drivers.

mv linux-2.6.**.*/ linux/

Now we copy the config file into the kernel source folder and make it hidden (this is how the compiler likes it).

cp /root/config /usr/src/linux/.config

Dont forget the . in .config.

Ok you now have the same conditions that the altiris developers had before they made there kernel. But we want more in our kernel so its time to make some changes.

cd linux
make menuconfig

Now you need to go to the bottom of the menu and select load config it should already be filled with .config so select ok.
Now you can go through the menu making the changes you require. you probably want to add support for a new chip set of SATA controller so have a look in the drivers section for what you require. I recommend compiling in your options a posed to making modules as this takes up space in the rootfs later on which has a fixed max size. So set your options to have a * a posed to a M if possible.
When finished exit out and save your config.
Now you can compile your kernel enter the following:

make
make modules_install


That’s it, watch the screen go flying by for a while and eventually it will finish if it ends with lines with ERROR: in them something has gone wrong. But hopefully this wont happen.
Your new kernel will be waiting for you in the folder /usr/src/linux/arch/x86/boot/ the kernel file is the one called bzImage.
Copy this out to a safe place and rename to “linux” all lower case.
Now we need to mount the rootfs file to make some changes.

mkdir /mnt/rootfs
mount -o loop /root/rootfs /mnt/rootfs
cd /mnt/rootfs

you are now inside the rootfs file. We now need to update the modules for the kernel:

cd lib/modules
rm -r 2.6.18.8  (or what ever folder is there)
cp -r /lib/modules/2.6.**.* /mnt/rootfs/lib/modules/2.6.**.*

You will probably also want to update your pci detection list. to do this enter:

update-pciids
cp /usr/share/misc/pci.ids /mnt/rootfs/usr/share/pci.ids
cp /usr/share/misc/pci.ids /mnt/rootfs/usr/local/share/pci.ids

You can make more changes if needed. When finished unmount the rootfs:

umount /mnt/rootfs

now copy your /root/rootfs file out to some ware safe.
Thats it a new kernel is compiled.
To use this kernel and root fs over right the linux and rootfs files in the \bootwiz\platforms\linux\x86\base\ folder with the onse you have just made.
Then make a new Linux PXE option or edit an existing one to force a rebuild. Using the regenerate images doesn’t work at least in 6.9 sp2 of the DS.
Now boot your kernel and see how it goes.
If you want to see your kernel boot and get a bit more debug info from it you can remove the quiet commend from the pxeconfig file located in \bootwiz\platforms\linux\x86\misc\ you also need to rebuild the image after this as above.

How to build a driver module

Now you have built a kernel you can build driver modules for that kernel (important)
when you have found your driver source files copy them and extract them to a folder I use /usr/scr/drivers/
then cd in to the driver directory you might find another folder in that named src if so cd into there as well. you should now be in a folder with files with extensions of .c and .h. enter the following commands:

make -C /usr/src/linux SUBDIRS=$(pwd) modules

You will now have a .ko file that was not there before this is your driver and it needs to be copied to your bootwiz folder to the following directory string.
“.\Boozwiz\platforms\Linux\x86\Drivers\CUSTOM\lib\modules\_ver_\kernel\opt\bdc”
You will need to make all those folder if they are not already there. Then recreate your PXE image as before.

You may need to change the paths for your installation but this should work quite well.
As allways take a backup before you run this just in case.

Here is a little diagram of what we are trying to achieve.

the servers go here.

The Master server is an ispCP box running several domains.

The Secondary server can also be an ispCP box with its own domains on or it could be just a bind server just for secondary DNS.

The Tertiary server is the same as the secondary server.

The zones for the domains running on Master are created automatically on the Master server but need to be transferred to the other two servers. Here is steps that we took to achieve this.

First off we need to create a user on all of our servers that will be used to do the transfer.
useradd -g bind -m -p password dnstrans

This will add a user called dnstrans in the group bind.

Next we need a script that will make the config file for the secondary servers this needs to be edited differently from the master servers config file. We found a script that was written to do the job but we found it not to work quite right. Here is a copy of our script.

#!/bin/bash
# Replace "x.y.z.w" with the IP address of your master DNS
MASTER=x.y.z.w
DB_PATH=/var/cache/bind/
user=dnstrans
group=bind
file=/home/$user/`hostname`sec
echo "#start" > $file #empties transfer file
pushd $DB_PATH # changes to directory path and stores pwd
#ls -1 *.db | awk -v m=$MASTER -v path=$DB_PATH '{ print gensub(/(.*)\.db/,"zone\"\\1\" { type slave; file \""path"/manual/\\1.db\"; masters { "m"; }; };", g,$9); }'
ls -1 /var/cache/bind/ |gawk -v m=$MASTER '{print gensub(/(.*)\.db/,"zone \"\\1\" { type slave; masters { "m"; }; file \""path"\\1.db\"; };",1) }' >> $file
chown $user.$group $file
popd # pops back to pwd

Place this script in /usr/local/sbin/trans. It will also need to be made executable with the following

chmod +x /usr/local/sbin/trans

This script will output a file the the dnstrans home called “xxxsec” were xxx is the host name of the master DNS server that has created this file. This will be the file that we need to transfer to the secondary servers.

Next we automate the creation of this file every hour using crontab.

crontab -e
02 * * * * /usr/local/sbin/trans

This will run at 2 minuites after the hour every hour.

That is it for the master server next we need to configure our secondary servers.

We have to pull the file that has been created to our secondary server with this script.

#/bin/bash
cd /etc/bind/
wget ftp://dnstrans:password@master.server.tld/betasec --passive-ftp #download the zone file
rndc reload #reload the dns domains

We also need this file to be placed in /usr/local/sbin/getdns and it will need to be made executable.

chmod +x /usr/local/sbin/getdns

This will pull the file to the secondary DNS servers /etc/bind/ folder. Next we need to edit the secondary DNS servers config to include the new file this is done with this command.

echo 'include "/etc/bind/hostnamesec";' >> /etc/bind/named.conf.local

Last off we need to automate the pull of the file this is done with a cron job on the secondary server as bellow.

crontab -e
09 * * * * /usr/local/sbin/getdns

This job will run at 9 minuites after the hour every hour.

John has also done a wright up of this project and as he did most of it his is probably better than mine so here is the link to his.

I have pre filled the voltage for the UK you can change this though for your specific application.

You need to have any two of the fore values for the calculation to work.

IspCP is a branch of the VHCS project but it is a bit more of a welcoming project with a lot more activity on the development side of things.

This howto will also work with Debian Sarge.

This is a scripted install of ispCP so after the first few commands all you have to do is answer the questions.

In this howto I have started off with a clean install of etch with only openssh-server installed.

Login as root and change to root directory.
# cd /root
Download the mini install script from here.
Un-tar the mini install.
# tar -xvzf ispcp-omega-mini-installer-latest.tar.gz

Remove the tar file after extraction for house keeping.
# rm rm ispcp-omega-mini-installer-latest.tar.gz

Change to the extracted directory.
# cd ispcp-omega-mini-installer-0.5/

Run the install script (from here on its just a case of answering the questions).
# ./ispcp-omega-mini-installer-0.5.sh

You will get this menu:
Welcome to ispCP Omega mini installer.
Please, select your operative system
1) Debian Sarge 3) Gentoo 5) Ubuntu 7) Other
2) Debian Etch 4) Fedora 6) OpenSuSE
#?
Type 2. you will then be prompted to install a package called dialog.
Dialog was not found on your system.
Want me to install it? [Y/N]
Typey to install dialog.
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed
dialog
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 216kB of archives.
After unpacking 1221kB of additional disk space will be used.
WARNING: The following packages cannot be authenticated!
dialog
Install these packages without verification [y/N]?
Type y again at the apt screen to install dialog.

If asked install Bzip2.

Select the install you want to try for a more stable install I recommend Release Candidate until there is an official stable release. If you want to test the latest release go for a nightly build though it might be a bit buggy.

The script will then download your chosen version.

You will be asked to add some new reposes to the source.list select yes for default though it will try and download all packages then from Germany if you have the default .debian.org sources for your country set-up already I would stick with them it will be faster.
You will be asked if you want to install all the dependencies take note of the config options you need to make and select yes.
Then it will install ispCP and will ask you some info about your domain name for the hosting front end and the ip of the server this needs to be the live internet ip just in case your server is behind a NAT firewall.
I will make this more detailed as ispCP is developed but I think it might change quite a bit in the near future.

I mainly use windows for gaming and want the performance of my raid disks in windows. So here is what you need to do.

Firstly I unplug all my disks apart from the one I want to install my Linux on in my case Ubuntu and install on to the selected disk and install grub to this as well (I am a bit paranoid that I might trash the wrong drive you see). Then I connect all the disks back in again and make sure the machine boots from the BIOS to the Linux disk. Then I go in to the distro and edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst I then add the following lines to boot windows:

title Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista (loader1)
map (hd0,0) (hd1,0)
map (hd1,0) (hd0,0)
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

If you have a lot of disks you might want to add several options to boot into windows like this:

title Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista (loader2)
map (hd1,1) (hd2,1)
map (hd2,1) (hd1,1)
rootnoverify (hd2,1)
makeactive
chainloader +1

title Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista (loader3)
map (hd2,2) (hd3,2)
map (hd3,2) (hd2,2)
rootnoverify (hd3,2)
makeactive
chainloader +1

title Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista (loader4)
map (hd3,3) (hd4,3)
map (hd4,3) (hd3,3)
rootnoverify (hd4,3)
makeactive
chainloader +1

Once you know which loader works you can make a note and remove the excess code from the file.

This works for SATA as well as PATA drive. I have tried it with XP and vista and it works great.

Bellow is a gallery of my screen mod I bought a peace of alli and filed it to shape then footprint drilled the howl in the middle which then also needed to be filled to the right size. I then used two blanking plates to mount the screen and using the screen as a template I drilled the howls to hold the screen. I have used some software called LCD Smartie (Link to follow) though the current ver is not supported in Vista it works a dream in XP.

[mygal=case-screen-mod]