My experiments with Linux: July 2012

Introduction, ah it will be boring, skip below first screenshot to get the kernel compilation how to.

But if you have time to read and patience to hear, good luck with the following paras, :)

After long time, I am finding a bit of free time and used my leisure time to build i7 optimized kernel, recorded every command into script, install and test and create this article for later reference for anyone who would wish to build/play around with kernel ... and know what?

I followed my own earlier article to build this kernel, why not?

My memory is not unlimited and after many tries with Ubuntu, Fedora, Kubuntu and in between some heavy office work, some boring books to read from libraries (due to due dates), exploring my xperia phone with ics updates, fixing my windows 7 which gobbled a whole day, updating my friends galaxy s2 to ics, googling cars, visiting relatives, spending my time in doctors lobby and much more day to day stuff ...

My linux sense triggered again to build and play with Kernel 3.4

This time, I do not have Ubuntu (sorry Unity I am damn confused how to use it)

It hardly matters, I have a better Ubuntu which is Mint 13 with Cinnamon. Now the base is Ubuntu 12.04 and everything related to kernel compilation is same to my happiness.

I have been too lazy to touch Mint and build kernel, as it is quite stable and does not give me problems to look inside or play around. But hey, I am not going to let Mint spoil my geekiness

Here I come, Mint, to shatter your stability and perched laziness by pushing my custom built kernel into you to displace your rock stable kernel

Come on gutsy guys, if you dare, you could get yourself into kernel compilation voyage. If you are faint hearted, be happy with Mint 13 default, do not even touch it

Read ahead, buf if you are impatient to build and try the fruits of my efforts, scroll down to the bottom and you have the download links. This time I tried google drive for sharing and it should be easy to download (tell me if you like)

Straight to the point, here is the Mint 13 screenshot showing new kernel running

To build Kernel 3.4.4 in Mint13 or Ubuntu 12.04 yourself follow this steps

Install Build dependencies
Download Kernel 3.4.4 and Ubuntu patches
Extract and apply Ubuntu patches
Create i7 flavour and tweak kernel config for i7 flavour
Tweak Makefile for optimizing
Build
Optionally install xorg x-swat ppa and upgrade
Reboot and Test

I will try to explain each step in this article

Install build dependencies

Execute these apt-get commands as a sudo user from terminal

sudo apt-get install fakeroot build-essential crash kexec-tools makedumpfile kernel-wedge libncurses5 binutils-dev libelf-dev libdw-dev libnewt-dev libncurses5-dev

sudo apt-get install flex

sudo apt-get install bison

sudo apt-get --no-install-recommends install asciidoc xmlto

Optional: GCC 4.7 in Ubuntu 12.04 or Mint 13

If you want to build using gcc 4.7 then follow these steps to install gcc 4.7 in Ubuntu 12.04 from PPA

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-toolchain-r/test

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install gcc-4.7

sudo apt-get install g++-4.7

Download Kernel sources and Ubuntu patches

You could download the kernel 3.4.4 sources from kernel.org and Ubuntu patches for kernel 3.4.4 from kernel ppa directory

If you prefer not to worry downloading individually, you could just copy and paste these commands in command line and let wget do the downloading job for you

mkdir Builds
cd Builds

wget -c http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.0/linux-3.4.4.tar.bz2
wget -c http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.4.4-quantal/0001-base-packaging.patch
wget -c http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.4.4-quantal/0002-debian-changelog.patch
wget -c http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.4.4-quantal/0003-default-configs.patch

Here is a screenshot of wget downloading kernel source in command line

Here is a screenshot showing how I got the download links of ppa for wget, you would not need this if you just use wget given above

Here is a screenshot showing efficient wget completion of sources and ubuntu patches

Extract and Apply Ubuntu patches

You could use gui to unzip the bz2 kernel tarball, but if you prefer command line, use the following command

Extract

tar xjvf linux-3.4.4.tar.bz2

A screenshot showing the same in action

Soft Link linux folder

Create a soft link for the extracted folder and change to the linux folder using cd

ln -s linux-3.4.4 linux
cd linux

Apply the patches

From the terminal do the following from inside the linux folder, see previous step to know what I mean as linux folder

patch -p1 < ../0001-base-packaging.patch

patch -p1 < ../0002-debian-changelog.patch

patch -p1 < ../0003-default-configs.patch

Create i7 flavour

Before creating a new kernel flavor, we give execute permissions for the build scripts

chmod -Rv +x debian/rules

chmod -Rv +x debian/scripts/

Clone existing flavor

cp debian.master/config/amd64/config.flavour.generic debian.master/config/amd64/config.flavour.i7

Prepare

first clean and update the new flavor

fakeroot debian/rules clean

fakeroot debian/rules updateconfigs

copy existing config from rock stable 12.04 kernel using uname -r, do not save it in .config, as this file is heavily modified when calling editconfigs

cp /boot/config-`uname -r` stableconfig

Run editconfigs

Give yes to i7 config and no to all other configs

fakeroot debian/rules editconfigs

Load alternate config and choose stableconfig which is untouched by editconfigs, save alternate config and save .config after changing processor type and kernel frequency

Here is a screenshot showing loading of stable config

Change processor and processor frequency

Screenshot showing chaning processor type

Screenshot after processor type change

Screenshot with default frequency

Screenshot with frequency modification

After processor frequency modification

Before exiting, save the config as .config by selecting save alternate config

Adjust abi

cp debian.master/abi/3.5.0-0.0/amd64/generic debian.master/abi/3.5.0-0.0/amd64/i7

cp debian.master/abi/3.5.0-0.0/amd64/generic.modules debian.master/abi/3.5.0-0.0/amd64/i7.modules

sed -i s/getall\ amd64\ generic/getall\ amd64\ generic\ i7/g debian.master/etc/getabis

sed -i s/\=\ generic/\=\ generic\ i7/g debian.master/rules.d/amd64.mk

cp debian.master/control.d/vars.generic debian.master/control.d/vars.i7

sed -i s/\"Generic\"/\"core\ i7\"/g debian.master/control.d/vars.i7

Tweak Makefile

You can change makefile manually to update the processor arch to corei7 (corei7 is target instructions for i3, i5 and i7 intel processors)

sed -i s/\=\ gcc/\=\ gcc\ \-march\=corei7\ \-mtune\=corei7\ \-pipe/g Makefile

sed -i s/\=\ g++/\=\ g++\ \-march\=corei7\ \-mtune\=corei7\ \-pipe/g Makefile

sed -i s/core2/corei7/g arch/x86/Makefile

sed -i s/core2/corei7/g arch/x86/Makefile_32.cpu

Optional: If you want to use gcc4.7 for building then use the following instead of the above

This changes gcc to gcc-4.7 and g++ to g++-4.7, also mtune is changed to core-avx-i to optimize for the latest i7 processors with avx instructions

sed -i s/\=\ gcc/\=\ gcc\-4\.7\ \-march\=corei7\ \-mtune\=core\-avx\-i\ \-pipe/g Makefile

sed -i s/\=\ g++/\=\ g++\-4\.7\ \-march\=corei7\ \-mtune\=core\-avx\-i\ \-pipe/g Makefile

sed -i s/core2/corei7/g arch/x86/Makefile

sed -i s/core2/corei7/g arch/x86/Makefile_32.cpu

Build and install

We do a clean build of headers and kernel image with newly created i7 flavor

fakeroot debian/rules clean

skipabi=true skipmodule=true fakeroot debian/rules binary-headers

time skipabi=true skipmodule=true no_dumpfile=yes fakeroot debian/rules binary-i7

Install the newly built packages from previous directory by using cd

cd ..

sync

sudo dpkg -i linux-headers-3.4.4-030404_3.4.4-030404.201206221555_all.deb linux-headers-3.4.4-030404-i7_3.4.4-030404.201206221555_amd64.deb linux-image-3.4.4-030404-i7_3.4.4-030404.201206221555_amd64.deb

sync

Optionally install xorg ppa for nvidia latest drivers

if you face problem in building dkms modules of nvidia, here is how I resolved it

Rebooted into new kernel, I added xorg x-swat ppa, updated through synaptic and upgraded all nvidia packages

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade

Reboot and Enjoy

After installing newly built kernel, reboot into kernel

Here are the,

Download Links

Kernel Headers All --> Link
Kernel Headers --> Link
Kernel Image --> Link
Script to Build --> Link

SHA256SUM of above in order

ba18d38b88a621b8758a2293365b6750da298e262946a635044d81eed1cf501c linux-headers-3.4.4-030404_3.4.4-030404.201206221555_all.deb
8c050642b90de73d9b3a8cfad3e072d63406d6b49a89422e4c8f616d8520a77a linux-headers-3.4.4-030404-i7_3.4.4-030404.201206221555_amd64.deb
c48586472892897c2ee4362976708f8bcbdd4f10369b82943b053eab99f611f0 linux-image-3.4.4-030404-i7_3.4.4-030404.201206221555_amd64.deb
d85d8f0ef88627633c519d5ba197a19216815644c00185f674052d772a59d0cc Kernel3.4.4Compilation

Below are the download links of kernel and headers built using gcc-4.7

Kernel Headers All
Kernel Headers
Kernel Image
Script to Build (save this file and give it execute permissions using chmod +x or you can execute all the instructions one by one after reviewing :) )

SHA256SUM of above in order

49e25d90ddabcbc56e8c43bc1702791e36ef74b80c5f72542ad6afbb9939e8f9 linux-headers-3.4.4-030404_3.4.4-030404.201206221555_all.deb
d18401bc72902f559fac2153b4568d634e4b4863addcba139a997f56feb32bd3 linux-headers-3.4.4-030404-i357_3.4.4-030404.201206221555_amd64.deb
400864ae46f3f898e567b0d77097ee0c46861d9d0537bf21440005749c2810e7 linux-image-3.4.4-030404-i357_3.4.4-030404.201206221555_amd64.deb
bf2baa2cedd9ee9e194e35ad4ef56f511f2fa557a4ce56305a8bb7f32d1789e9 KernelCompilation344UsingGCC47

Kernel 3.4.6 optimized for i7 (64 bit)

SHA256SUM of the above in order

c7870ec1a3e3e9bd30a46fd9816feb9f4c574fb063865b13aca4ea977ae53f57 buildkernel3.4.6.sh
c10441220d94221155a50d13ba7ef448052e385ff897837b48ec0f7f9b552ab0 linux-headers-3.4.6-030406_3.4.6-030406.201207191609_all.deb
87758a8b1c2b93e025be041a2eb0fbbd1bc4f2e7d6411d16f8535ef71aba660e linux-headers-3.4.6-030406-i7_3.4.6-030406.201207191609_amd64.deb
1f801329bf41e53fc0b43526ad0d6f7827a4f752ff4bce49c0c6f037b8180879 linux-image-3.4.6-030406-i7_3.4.6-030406.201207191609_amd64.deb

Kernel 3.5.2 optimized for i7 (64 bit)

SHA256SUM of the above in order

c6a3f6996242af24e719f3c6e029749a052954328efb4daa2cca87ead81977d7 buildkernel352.sh
47a8dbc136af8ff1331ddcd5841a226242ba3ae635534bb0c3f0b9dcead1ef5f linux-headers-3.5.2-030502_3.5.2-030502.201208151151_all.deb
6965992662a3a4db3b7c02bcb9f0c4dd60f61dbb7c930485f6b5fc806b41e101 linux-headers-3.5.2-030502-i7_3.5.2-030502.201208151151_amd64.deb
25807da234187423ff746edc2976bf2aa4c81a6832f9dc1b725ca63410022350 linux-image-3.5.2-030502-i7_3.5.2-030502.201208151151_amd64.deb