686 kernel compilation
 

Hi,

By mistake I chose a 486 kernel during Debian installation. Obviously it only recognises one core of my dual core turion (AMD Turion(TM) 64 X2). I could install it again and choose the rigcht kernel, but I thought I could get the latest one and just recompile it. My question is simple:

1. You know in 'make menuconfig' which options are responsible for 2 cores - smp - kernel - I mean I would guess it's something with 686?:) Can you tell me which ones exactly?

2. Which processor to specify: amd athlon/opteron ? (I want to stick with 32 bits - my distro is i386)

3. which options to specify to get BIGMEM. Is it only the bigmem one, or are there any other ones?


thank you

I haven't compiled a kernel in quite a while.

Why not just install the kernel you want from the repositories? Then aptitude install linux-image-2.6.XXXX-X-686 or whatever the filename is that you need (i.e. bigmem, 686, etc). If you want to stick with 32 bit, don't download one of the amd64 kernels, just use a plain -686 kernel.

Thanks for your reply.

These are the results of apt-cache:


Why don't they have any kernel tailored for athlons - it' all intel!!!
The other thing is that I'd rather get the 2.6.23.9 - it's a laptop and I hope to get a better support for some of
my hardware in the latest kernel.

thanks
regards
sycamorex

It's not really intel specific, it's that class of processor. Just like on the 64-bit side, they're all said to be tailored for AMD64 chips, not to EM64T intel chips. I'd just install the -3-686 version and try it out.

You can copy the config file from the /boot directory, then download a 2.6.23 kernel and make oldconfig to compile your own. That should have all the proper things marked for you.

thanks, that's a good idea - I'll do it