Kernel customization is not for everyone.
just note before you try any of this that it can break your system.
There’s a bunch of reasons that you’d want to customize your kernel.
This article will not explain how to patch your kernel, just how to customize your current one.
To start, we need to figure out what version of the kernel we are currently running.
We also need to plant the curses library and some other tools to help us compile.
There’s other ways to do this, but I prefer this way.
sudo /bin/bash
Now change directory into the source location so that we can install.
Note that you may need to plant the bunzip utility if it’s not installed.
Navigation is pretty simple, there’s a legend at the top if you get lost.
I decided to select Networking and hit the Enter key to go down into that category.
What in the hell is that installed for?
You’ll note by the * that it’s built-in to the kernel.
key, we can see the help for that particular item.
Here’s the explanation:
Well, I’m going to disable that immediately.
Why on earth is that installed in my kernel anyway?
I hit Esc to exit the help screen, and then hit N to exclude that from my kernel.
When you are finished making whatever choices you want, hit Exit and save the configuration when prompted.
Now we have a configuration ready for compile.
First we’ll do a make clean, just to confirm everything is ready for the compile.
make-kpkg clean
Next we’ll actually compile the kernel.
This will take a LONG FREAKING TIME, so go find something interesting to do.
The filenames will probably be different on your system.
This could break things!
you could then shut down the kernel in /boot/grub/menu.lst or try and compile again.
dpkg -i linux-image-2.6.17.14-ubuntu1-custom_2.6.17.14-ubuntu1-custom-10.00.Custom_i386.deb dpkg -i linux-headers-2.6.17.14-ubuntu1-custom_2.6.17.14-ubuntu1-custom-10.00.Custom_i386.deb
Now reboot your machine.
If everything works, you should be running your new custom kernel.
you might check this by using uname.
Note that the exact number will be different on your machine.
