Learning how to build my own linux kernel

Question

Reference - http://www.linode.com/wiki/index.php/PV-GRUB#Building_Your_Own_Kernel

In order to work with Xen, a number of options that must be selected:

CONFIG_PARAVIRT_GUEST=y
CONFIG_XEN=y
CONFIG_PARAVIRT=y
CONFIG_PARAVIRT_CLOCK=y
CONFIG_XEN_BLKDEV_FRONTEND=y
CONFIG_XEN_NETDEV_FRONTEND=y
CONFIG_HVC_XEN=y
CONFIG_XEN_BALLOON=y
CONFIG_XEN_SCRUB_PAGES=y

Where exactly do I specify these configuration?

I have done these steps so far:-

wget http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.0/linux-3.3.3.tar.bz2
tar -xf linux-3.3.3.tar.bz2
cd linux-3.3.3
make menuconfig

make menuconfig brings me to the ncurses "GUI" but there are so many options I am completely lost....

Any suggestions how I should proceed?

You can also search for the options with slash followed by option_name inside make menuconfig! e.g. /CONFIG_XEN will tell you where this option is found. — hookenz, Apr 26 '12 at 05:07

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 26 '12 at 04:19

2

The options in all caps are what gets written into the configuration file for the kernel you will be building (which make menuconfig generates).

There are two ways to edit it:

Open the file and change/add the entries
Browse to the relevant Xen options through the GUI, and guess their names from the all caps name. Yours will most likely be in Processor type and features --->. You can press the help key to see the option's name and description so you can confirm that you are modifying/adding the correct options.

answered Apr 26 '12 at 04:19

gparent

136
5

Yes. Someone on #kernel irc channel just told me to vim .config so this solves my problem. Thanks mate! – Calvin Cheng Apr 26 '12 at 04:28
2

You could use the .config file as a guide to locate each parameter in the menus, but that would be a lot of extra work. – David Schwartz Apr 26 '12 at 04:51
Yup, that's a good tip, @DavidSchwartz. Thanks. – Calvin Cheng May 13 '12 at 04:43

Learning how to build my own linux kernel

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