So I successfully built an rpm kernel from a plain vanilla 2.6.4 source tree (yeah, baby!!). Now I obviously have two rpms generated: the actual kernel (kernel-2.6.4-2.rpm) and the source package (kernel-2.6.4-2.src.rpm). Now my questions is quite simple really. For the source package, should I rename it to kernel-source-2.6.4-2.rpm? How do I know without installing an rpm package where will the files be installed to? (something like rpm -ql <package> but before you actually install it).

Thanks for any imput. Up until now I've been unable to locate this information within the manual pages (I must admit also, that I really suck at understanding most of those manuals... some of them are just too cryptic).

PS: If you wanna know how to do it in FC1, just say so, and I'll consider posting a guide on how to build, install, etc a 2.6.x Kernel for FC1 (and in RPM format )

There should be a Specfile and a Makefile in there.

I'll look into it, but looking at the top level Makefile there's no reference to the spec (that I could find)... I'll check the top level Spec file. Thanks.

Why? The file name is irrelevant. The real package name is stored inside the package format header.
rpm -qpl filename | less
or:
rpm -qplv filename | less

Note that src.rpm packages are not installed, but extracted. You can also use rpm -ivvh file to get more verbose output.

Thank you VERY much... this is just what I was looking for. I meant that about the .src.rpm based on the kenrel-source packages distributed by RH and Fedora. If this particular package will start a kernel compilation, how do I make one that will just extract the sources to /usr/src?

Every src.rpm extracts below /usr/src/redhat by default (unless you've configured RPM to extract it somewhere else -- you should do that).

On the contrary, the kernel-source package is a binary rpm, created with rpmbuild --rebuild --target i386 kernel*.src.rpm

This much I knew. I was just puzzled about the kernel-source package... That way I may be able to give my three computers a more centralized administration by just building one kernel optimized for them, in binary form instead of having to compile pretty much the same kernel in each one. The kenrel-source package would come in handy for drivers stuff (mainly ALSA and nVidia and or ATi's)
So this usual rebuild will generate the kernel-source and not build an i386 generic kernel?

Unlike other target architectures, target i386 will build several .i386.rpm sub-packages, including kernel, kernel-doc, kernel-source and kernel-BOOT.

w00t! Thanks for the info! This is MUCH appreciated!

BTW the rpm -qplv kernel-2.6.4-2.src.rpm only lists two files, the tar.gz of the kenrel (kernel-2.6.4.tar.gz) and the the spec file. Anyway I'll give that a try (although it will take a while )

That's expected. A src.rpm contains just a spec file, a source archive, maybe additional patches, helper scripts, prepared config files, everything that's needed to build the binary stuff from the sources.

Can you tell me how you build the rpm format, I already have the kernel 2.6.4 installed

What I did:

• Ensure rpm will not look for debugging lists. For that you should create/edit the file /root/.rmpmacros and add:
  
  Code:

  %debug_package %{null}

• Now simply run at the linux-2.6.4 root directory: make rpm.

Warning You should really use the above mentioned rpm commands to fine tune/tweak the supplied kenrel.spec file!! (in my case the installed kernel did not provided an initrd image, until I did)