Hi,

I have a problem. Now I am running on Slackware 10.1
on my Compaq Presario 725AP. Kernel is 2.4.29,
while it has ACPI, it does not have advance
features such as PowerNow! management. As a result
this machine will shutdown when under relatively
heavy load.

How can I can compile the latest 2.6 kernel
(which has the PowerNow feature) if this machine
cannot even handle heavy workload?
I am thinking of compiling it on different
machine and then copy the files across. Anyone
has the steps to do it?

Thanks!

Compile as you would compile on your laptop. Remember to change processor type and acpi configuration which are suitable for your laptop. There's a sticky kernel compilation guide.

Thanks for the quick reply. The kernel I believe
I can copy across to my laptop. But what about
the steps for the modules? Do a manual create
of the directories in the lib directory?

Modules reside im /lib/modules/kernel-version directory. Another suggestion, use same gcc in both computers if you can. As well, you can compile this kernel without lots of modules and recompile including modules when you get it transferred.

When I do a compile for a different machine, I just do a "make modules_install" like normal, and then tar up the contents of the /lib/modules/kernel-version directory. Then I copy over the binary kernel and tar file, and install them accordingly.

That does require you to be running a different kernel on the donor machine then you are compiling for the recipient computer though (or at least temporarily renaming your actual module directory).

Also, this is getting away from the question at hand a bit, but looking up the 725AP, it says it is a 1.3 GHz machine.

I don't mean to sound elitist here, but when I compile on one machine to copy to another, I do it because the target machine is <200 Mhz, when a kernel compile would take 2 hours plus.

On a 1.3 GHz machine, you are talking about 20 minutes, at maximum. In the time it took to post this question and wait for answers, you could have compiled the kernel on the machine itself 4 times over by now.

I understand what you are saying about the PowerNow part, but certainly you can just plug the machine into AC power, or disable any CPU scaling in the BIOS.

If you REALLY can't overide it, then install the 2.6 kernel packages from /testing, and once the machine is running on 2.6 and you have control over the CPU, you can compile a new kernel as you see fit from the machine itself.

MS3FGX, thanks for your informative reply.

The problem with this machine is that it
cannot handle heavy load due to heat issues.
I have tried compiling and after about
2 minutes it will shutdown automatically as
the whole machine will get pretty hot.

Using the kernel from /testing will not
help as the ACPI options are not enabled.