Debian Kernel Construction

The kernel for Debian comes prepackaged as a kernel image  .deb

file.

Installing this with dpkg or dselect will deliver a pre compiled kernel of that

version to the system. In many cases this is perfectly adequate and results in

a new functional kernel with little effort. When this fails to be adequate to

the needs of the system there is a kernel source package to help resolve the

problems.

Installing the kernel source package with either dpkg or dselect will result

in the kernel source being unpacked into /usr/src/linux via a linux symlink

similar to that used in the /usr/local/source example to link the linux directory

to the correct kernel source . There is also the file .linux versions

placed in /usr/src. This file contains a list of all the kernel source and kernel

header packages that have been installed on the system. The reason the version

number is embedded into the package name is to allow more than one version

of kernel source (or header or image) to reside on the system at the same time.

If you have installed all of the tools needed to build a kernel, in addition to the

kernel source package the kernel package package must also be installed.

This package contains the scripts needed to build the kernel and make image,

header, and source packages. Once this package is installed the following

results can be obtained when make kpkg is executed from the kernel source

directory:

  make kpkg build Will build a kernel.

  make kpkg binary Will make all the kernel packages.

  make kpkg kernel image Will make only the kernel image package.

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