Why do the Handbook kernel install instructions not just...

[John R. Graham]

...use "make install"?

I've always wondered about that. It's simpler, the System.map-* and config-* files don't waste much space and are sometimes useful, and the symlinks are very nice. In particular, the symlinks can be used to reduce the complexity of the grub.conf on initial install. There could be a nice explanation in the Handbook contrasting the simple method (e.g., "make install" and simple grub.conf) vs. the precise control method (e.g., copying just what you need and specifying explicit filenames in grub.conf).

(I'd even be willing to rewrite the section.)

Just wondering.

- John

[der.gecko]

true, but with the actual handbook the user (probably a newbie) should get a better understanding how his gentoo-linux works!

[John R. Graham]

I liked the symlink handling in the manual kernel build "make install" so much that I added identical functionality to genkernel (released in genkernel-3.4.9).

- John

[Mark Clegg]

IIRC when I was using gentoo on sparc a while ago, "make install" wasn't an option on that arch.

By using the long-hand method, the install doc's remain arch-independent.

[John R. Graham]

Thought it might be something like that. However, seems a little silly. "make install" is the simplest thing that the kernel build does. Why shouldn't it work across all architectures?

- John

[PaulBredbury]

Anyway, it should be:

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make clean bzImage modules modules_install

Suggesting "shortcut" commands, which don't perform a full recompilation, is why we see loads of "unknown symbol in kernel module" moans in threads.

[John R. Graham]

For brevity, I was not including the whole handbook when all I was talking about was the step that places the compiled kernel image into /boot.

It just seemed odd that the handbooks would not take advantage of the built-in automation of the manual kernel build process and that

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make install

was less error prone than

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cp arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/kernel-2.6.19-gentoo-r5

which is what is stated in the handbook, but the beginner must have read carefully enough to know to modify the kernel name based on what the version actually is. Seems like the Handbook method might be more error prone.

Similarly, it seems to me that there are less chances for error in grub.conf if the kernel name was always "vmlinuz" (at least for the inital setup of grub.conf), which is the name of the symlink that "make install" makes.

- John

[owner66]

I really do agree with where jrg is going on this. I had never done anything with Linux before, and settled on gentoo. I have sucessfully installed it from the livecd and am up and going. however, once i start looking into the hows and whys of what is really going on in the system, it seems like the handbook install overly complicates things. Or, at least, the handbook install should go into more detail about what you have really done after doing the livecd install. It is very confusing with all the cp arch/ stuff and bzImage stuff
In other words, going from the live cd install, and understanding how and why, should be covered in the "where to go from here?" section.
All I get is "If you are interested in optimizing your system for desktop use, or you want to learn how to configure your system to be a full working desktop system.."
What? why would i do that? I just installed, it's not fully working?
A tutorial on what this above statement means is needed IMHO.
ds

[neysx]

Been discussed before.
There are already several bugs about this question.
Just one of them as an example: http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=183346

[John R. Graham]

Ah. Many thanks, Xavier. It didn't make sense that this wouldn't have been discussed before. Guess I didn't search well enough.

- John