Hi people, I recently installed Gentoo 2005.1 with the plain 2.6.12.5 kernel. When I was configuring the kernel during the installation, I left out some things that should have been in there (like support for mounting SMB shares :/). Is it possible to kind of keep my old kernel config, but just add support for the things I need and recompile? I've seen somewhere (and I can't remember exactly where now, maybe Gentoo's forums) that says to just

# cd /usr/src/linux
# make menuconfig
# make && make modules_install

Is that the correct procedure or is there something else I need to do as well? I know I should backup the .config and my linux-2.6.12.5 files just in case.

Also, when how do I know when to compile something as a module and when to build it in to the kernel?

Edit: doing a search comes up with lots of horror stories; loads of people seem to end up with something not working after recompiling. I'm a little apprehensive because of this :/.

Any help appreciated, thanks.

Right, everyones going to make some mistakes the first time. Maybe the second time, too. If you use the LILO boot loader add another command to that list. After you've copied the new kernel image and System.map into /boot run the lilo command.

As long as you keep a backup of the original .config and keep your current working kernel in the boot loader you should be ok. If the new one has problems you can still boot the old one.

Actually, I'm using GRUB now since that was the default for Gentoo (although, I could have used LILO, seeing as I'm more used to it). Thanks for the reply!

I use the following steps to ensure I can reboot if I screw up a kernel make:

• Ensure a usable vmlinux is under /boot.
• #: mkdir /boot/2.6.x
• Change /etc/lilo.conf to load "Linux" from /boot/2.6.x/vmlinuz and "safe" from /boot/vmlinuz; enable "prompt" and "timeout" options. Save changes (duh).
• #: /sbin/lilo
• Alter /usr/src/linux/Makefile to export to /boot/2.6.x
• Configure new kernel
• #: make install && make modules_install
• Reboot and face the music.

Unmodified, "make install" will export your new vmlinuz and System.Map files to /boot. This way you don't need to copy files if you don't want to.

Appreciate your reply too, Charred. That's cool, I can copy the files manually.

Edit: heh, I did it and there was no kernel panic, or kernel oops. So, nothing has gone wrong so far and it boots fine . Yay!

Glad to help in any way.