Skip all new device drivers in `make oldconfig` for Linux kernel

Question

When using make oldconfig I usually look at new options briefly in case there's something important/useful.

However, on an existing system I couldn't care less about new device drivers for some hardware I obviously do not have. Is there a way to make make oldconfig skip all devices drivers?

FYI, sometimes new drivers are for older hardware (e.g., someone will rewrite the driver for X). Or a driver is split, etc. — derobert, Feb 22 '13 at 14:19
http://serverfault.com/questions/116299/automatically-answer-defaults-when-doing-make-oldconfig-on-a-kernel-tree — Ciro Santilli OurBigBook.com, Aug 10 '15 at 21:52

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 22 '13 at 21:27

1

When you do make oldconfig is shows new options only. You could force everyhing new to No with yes n | make oldconfig, but some old configuration could have changed (it used to be yes/no, now there are several numerical options, ...). Better don't do that.

answered Feb 22 '13 at 21:27

vonbrand

18,253

1

Safer alternative: make olddefconfig. Instead of saying plain no to everything, it takes the default value. I still take the time of going through things manually. There are usually 2-3 interesting questions before it gets to the obscure device drivers, and for the rest you can just keep the key pressed. – frostschutz Feb 23 '13 at 13:01

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 09 '14 at 17:45

There is make allnoconfig in the current kernel, see Documentation/kbuild/kconfig.txt .

Or, to work around the problem that some entries won't accept "N" you can allow for user input once it gets stuck on a question:

$ { while :; do
  for i in `seq 100`; do echo n; done; read n; echo $n; done } | make oldconfig

This returns input control to the user every 100 questions.

Skip all new device drivers in `make oldconfig` for Linux kernel

2 Answers2