Hi all,
I have a few questions regarding the kernel on my road to Linux Enlightenment...

1) what is the fundamental difference between the kernel source (e.g. as in /3/SRPMS/kernel-2.6.12-1.1372_FC3.src.rpm) and the kernel-devel (/i386/kernel-devel-2.6.12-1.1372_FC3.i686.rpm)? Does the kernel-devel just contain the headers?

2) is i386/kernel-2.6.12-1.1372_FC3.i686.rpm just the corresponding binary RPM to kernel-2.6.12-1.1372_FC3.src.rpm? With that, if you so wish, you could build your own kernel?

3) is kernel-2.6.12-1.1372_FC3.src.rpm 'just' the current kernel.org src plus whatever else RH want to throw in? Is, for example, SELINUX one of these extras?

thanks for your thoughts...

joel

Yes. For those people that just want to build add-on kernel modules (like the Nvidia video drivers), the headers are needed, but not the source.

It is a binary created from the source. There can be many binaries, with different options and built for different architectures from the same source. The example you listed, kernel-2.6.12-1.1372_FC3.i686.rpm, is built for i686 (Pentium Pro and later 32-bit processors), based on the kernel.org 2.6.12 kernel, with the Fedora 1.1372 patch-level, for Fedora Core 3.

It is the vanilla (unmodified) kernel source from kernel.org, packaged with a set of patches from Fedora Core to that kernel, with an rpm SPEC file and scripts needed to configure and build the kernel. SELinux, if not in the mainstream kernel, will be one or more of the patches applied as part of the process of preparing the kernel source for building.

You're welcome.