I understand the process to compile and install a kernel on a machine, but if I installed want to tar the kernel, put it on another machine (my desktop to my laptop in this case) and then install it there, what steps do I instead take?

Nothing I've Googled or searched for here has covered that as everything written that I've found has the assumption that the kernel will be use on the machine in question.

Cheers!

Just unpack the kernel source somewhere on the maching you want to compile on. Setup the configuration for the machine you want the kernel to run on. Do all the steps but any kind of make install or make modules_install to build the kernel. Tar.bz2 your working directory, transphere it over, and finish up the process on the laptop.

FWIW I kind of do what jtshaw recommends, but a little different.

On the pc that I want the new kernel, I just extract the new kernel download file on the older/slower pc, I then run my make oldconfig, and then my 'make xconfig' (assuming your in X'), tweak it up, and hit save.

Then I just copy the '.config' file only over to a faster pc....and copy my new kernel download file, extract it there on the faster pc, put the new '.config' in my extracted source folder, run make.

After make is done, I just gzip up the newly made kernel, transfer it back to the slow pc, and extract it into my source folder on the slow pc, then go into it...and do the 'make modules_install' part.

I find that gzip is less stressful on my old pc's.

If your pc is old like mine:

from one folder up above your newly made kernel source on the faster pc if your in console, out of x goes faster, just do: 'tar -zcvf new-source-folder.tar.gz new-source-folder/' and then on the slow folder you just do 'tar -zxvf new-source-folder.tar.gz

don't use absolute paths is the key, and it goes much faster.

good luck.