mirror of
git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git
synced 2025-09-18 22:14:16 +00:00
902861e34c
from hotplugged memory rather than only from main memory. Series
"implement "memmap on memory" feature on s390".
- More folio conversions from Matthew Wilcox in the series
"Convert memcontrol charge moving to use folios"
"mm: convert mm counter to take a folio"
- Chengming Zhou has optimized zswap's rbtree locking, providing
significant reductions in system time and modest but measurable
reductions in overall runtimes. The series is "mm/zswap: optimize the
scalability of zswap rb-tree".
- Chengming Zhou has also provided the series "mm/zswap: optimize zswap
lru list" which provides measurable runtime benefits in some
swap-intensive situations.
- And Chengming Zhou further optimizes zswap in the series "mm/zswap:
optimize for dynamic zswap_pools". Measured improvements are modest.
- zswap cleanups and simplifications from Yosry Ahmed in the series "mm:
zswap: simplify zswap_swapoff()".
- In the series "Add DAX ABI for memmap_on_memory", Vishal Verma has
contributed several DAX cleanups as well as adding a sysfs tunable to
control the memmap_on_memory setting when the dax device is hotplugged
as system memory.
- Johannes Weiner has added the large series "mm: zswap: cleanups",
which does that.
- More DAMON work from SeongJae Park in the series
"mm/damon: make DAMON debugfs interface deprecation unignorable"
"selftests/damon: add more tests for core functionalities and corner cases"
"Docs/mm/damon: misc readability improvements"
"mm/damon: let DAMOS feeds and tame/auto-tune itself"
- In the series "mm/mempolicy: weighted interleave mempolicy and sysfs
extension" Rakie Kim has developed a new mempolicy interleaving policy
wherein we allocate memory across nodes in a weighted fashion rather
than uniformly. This is beneficial in heterogeneous memory environments
appearing with CXL.
- Christophe Leroy has contributed some cleanup and consolidation work
against the ARM pagetable dumping code in the series "mm: ptdump:
Refactor CONFIG_DEBUG_WX and check_wx_pages debugfs attribute".
- Luis Chamberlain has added some additional xarray selftesting in the
series "test_xarray: advanced API multi-index tests".
- Muhammad Usama Anjum has reworked the selftest code to make its
human-readable output conform to the TAP ("Test Anything Protocol")
format. Amongst other things, this opens up the use of third-party
tools to parse and process out selftesting results.
- Ryan Roberts has added fork()-time PTE batching of THP ptes in the
series "mm/memory: optimize fork() with PTE-mapped THP". Mainly
targeted at arm64, this significantly speeds up fork() when the process
has a large number of pte-mapped folios.
- David Hildenbrand also gets in on the THP pte batching game in his
series "mm/memory: optimize unmap/zap with PTE-mapped THP". It
implements batching during munmap() and other pte teardown situations.
The microbenchmark improvements are nice.
- And in the series "Transparent Contiguous PTEs for User Mappings" Ryan
Roberts further utilizes arm's pte's contiguous bit ("contpte
mappings"). Kernel build times on arm64 improved nicely. Ryan's series
"Address some contpte nits" provides some followup work.
- In the series "mm/hugetlb: Restore the reservation" Breno Leitao has
fixed an obscure hugetlb race which was causing unnecessary page faults.
He has also added a reproducer under the selftest code.
- In the series "selftests/mm: Output cleanups for the compaction test",
Mark Brown did what the title claims.
- Kinsey Ho has added the series "mm/mglru: code cleanup and refactoring".
- Even more zswap material from Nhat Pham. The series "fix and extend
zswap kselftests" does as claimed.
- In the series "Introduce cpu_dcache_is_aliasing() to fix DAX
regression" Mathieu Desnoyers has cleaned up and fixed rather a mess in
our handling of DAX on archiecctures which have virtually aliasing data
caches. The arm architecture is the main beneficiary.
- Lokesh Gidra's series "per-vma locks in userfaultfd" provides dramatic
improvements in worst-case mmap_lock hold times during certain
userfaultfd operations.
- Some page_owner enhancements and maintenance work from Oscar Salvador
in his series
"page_owner: print stacks and their outstanding allocations"
"page_owner: Fixup and cleanup"
- Uladzislau Rezki has contributed some vmalloc scalability improvements
in his series "Mitigate a vmap lock contention". It realizes a 12x
improvement for a certain microbenchmark.
- Some kexec/crash cleanup work from Baoquan He in the series "Split
crash out from kexec and clean up related config items".
- Some zsmalloc maintenance work from Chengming Zhou in the series
"mm/zsmalloc: fix and optimize objects/page migration"
"mm/zsmalloc: some cleanup for get/set_zspage_mapping()"
- Zi Yan has taught the MM to perform compaction on folios larger than
order=0. This a step along the path to implementaton of the merging of
large anonymous folios. The series is named "Enable >0 order folio
memory compaction".
- Christoph Hellwig has done quite a lot of cleanup work in the
pagecache writeback code in his series "convert write_cache_pages() to
an iterator".
- Some modest hugetlb cleanups and speedups in Vishal Moola's series
"Handle hugetlb faults under the VMA lock".
- Zi Yan has changed the page splitting code so we can split huge pages
into sizes other than order-0 to better utilize large folios. The
series is named "Split a folio to any lower order folios".
- David Hildenbrand has contributed the series "mm: remove
total_mapcount()", a cleanup.
- Matthew Wilcox has sought to improve the performance of bulk memory
freeing in his series "Rearrange batched folio freeing".
- Gang Li's series "hugetlb: parallelize hugetlb page init on boot"
provides large improvements in bootup times on large machines which are
configured to use large numbers of hugetlb pages.
- Matthew Wilcox's series "PageFlags cleanups" does that.
- Qi Zheng's series "minor fixes and supplement for ptdesc" does that
also. S390 is affected.
- Cleanups to our pagemap utility functions from Peter Xu in his series
"mm/treewide: Replace pXd_large() with pXd_leaf()".
- Nico Pache has fixed a few things with our hugepage selftests in his
series "selftests/mm: Improve Hugepage Test Handling in MM Selftests".
- Also, of course, many singleton patches to many things. Please see
the individual changelogs for details.
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Merge tag 'mm-stable-2024-03-13-20-04' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/akpm/mm
Pull MM updates from Andrew Morton:
- Sumanth Korikkar has taught s390 to allocate hotplug-time page frames
from hotplugged memory rather than only from main memory. Series
"implement "memmap on memory" feature on s390".
- More folio conversions from Matthew Wilcox in the series
"Convert memcontrol charge moving to use folios"
"mm: convert mm counter to take a folio"
- Chengming Zhou has optimized zswap's rbtree locking, providing
significant reductions in system time and modest but measurable
reductions in overall runtimes. The series is "mm/zswap: optimize the
scalability of zswap rb-tree".
- Chengming Zhou has also provided the series "mm/zswap: optimize zswap
lru list" which provides measurable runtime benefits in some
swap-intensive situations.
- And Chengming Zhou further optimizes zswap in the series "mm/zswap:
optimize for dynamic zswap_pools". Measured improvements are modest.
- zswap cleanups and simplifications from Yosry Ahmed in the series
"mm: zswap: simplify zswap_swapoff()".
- In the series "Add DAX ABI for memmap_on_memory", Vishal Verma has
contributed several DAX cleanups as well as adding a sysfs tunable to
control the memmap_on_memory setting when the dax device is
hotplugged as system memory.
- Johannes Weiner has added the large series "mm: zswap: cleanups",
which does that.
- More DAMON work from SeongJae Park in the series
"mm/damon: make DAMON debugfs interface deprecation unignorable"
"selftests/damon: add more tests for core functionalities and corner cases"
"Docs/mm/damon: misc readability improvements"
"mm/damon: let DAMOS feeds and tame/auto-tune itself"
- In the series "mm/mempolicy: weighted interleave mempolicy and sysfs
extension" Rakie Kim has developed a new mempolicy interleaving
policy wherein we allocate memory across nodes in a weighted fashion
rather than uniformly. This is beneficial in heterogeneous memory
environments appearing with CXL.
- Christophe Leroy has contributed some cleanup and consolidation work
against the ARM pagetable dumping code in the series "mm: ptdump:
Refactor CONFIG_DEBUG_WX and check_wx_pages debugfs attribute".
- Luis Chamberlain has added some additional xarray selftesting in the
series "test_xarray: advanced API multi-index tests".
- Muhammad Usama Anjum has reworked the selftest code to make its
human-readable output conform to the TAP ("Test Anything Protocol")
format. Amongst other things, this opens up the use of third-party
tools to parse and process out selftesting results.
- Ryan Roberts has added fork()-time PTE batching of THP ptes in the
series "mm/memory: optimize fork() with PTE-mapped THP". Mainly
targeted at arm64, this significantly speeds up fork() when the
process has a large number of pte-mapped folios.
- David Hildenbrand also gets in on the THP pte batching game in his
series "mm/memory: optimize unmap/zap with PTE-mapped THP". It
implements batching during munmap() and other pte teardown
situations. The microbenchmark improvements are nice.
- And in the series "Transparent Contiguous PTEs for User Mappings"
Ryan Roberts further utilizes arm's pte's contiguous bit ("contpte
mappings"). Kernel build times on arm64 improved nicely. Ryan's
series "Address some contpte nits" provides some followup work.
- In the series "mm/hugetlb: Restore the reservation" Breno Leitao has
fixed an obscure hugetlb race which was causing unnecessary page
faults. He has also added a reproducer under the selftest code.
- In the series "selftests/mm: Output cleanups for the compaction
test", Mark Brown did what the title claims.
- Kinsey Ho has added the series "mm/mglru: code cleanup and
refactoring".
- Even more zswap material from Nhat Pham. The series "fix and extend
zswap kselftests" does as claimed.
- In the series "Introduce cpu_dcache_is_aliasing() to fix DAX
regression" Mathieu Desnoyers has cleaned up and fixed rather a mess
in our handling of DAX on archiecctures which have virtually aliasing
data caches. The arm architecture is the main beneficiary.
- Lokesh Gidra's series "per-vma locks in userfaultfd" provides
dramatic improvements in worst-case mmap_lock hold times during
certain userfaultfd operations.
- Some page_owner enhancements and maintenance work from Oscar Salvador
in his series
"page_owner: print stacks and their outstanding allocations"
"page_owner: Fixup and cleanup"
- Uladzislau Rezki has contributed some vmalloc scalability
improvements in his series "Mitigate a vmap lock contention". It
realizes a 12x improvement for a certain microbenchmark.
- Some kexec/crash cleanup work from Baoquan He in the series "Split
crash out from kexec and clean up related config items".
- Some zsmalloc maintenance work from Chengming Zhou in the series
"mm/zsmalloc: fix and optimize objects/page migration"
"mm/zsmalloc: some cleanup for get/set_zspage_mapping()"
- Zi Yan has taught the MM to perform compaction on folios larger than
order=0. This a step along the path to implementaton of the merging
of large anonymous folios. The series is named "Enable >0 order folio
memory compaction".
- Christoph Hellwig has done quite a lot of cleanup work in the
pagecache writeback code in his series "convert write_cache_pages()
to an iterator".
- Some modest hugetlb cleanups and speedups in Vishal Moola's series
"Handle hugetlb faults under the VMA lock".
- Zi Yan has changed the page splitting code so we can split huge pages
into sizes other than order-0 to better utilize large folios. The
series is named "Split a folio to any lower order folios".
- David Hildenbrand has contributed the series "mm: remove
total_mapcount()", a cleanup.
- Matthew Wilcox has sought to improve the performance of bulk memory
freeing in his series "Rearrange batched folio freeing".
- Gang Li's series "hugetlb: parallelize hugetlb page init on boot"
provides large improvements in bootup times on large machines which
are configured to use large numbers of hugetlb pages.
- Matthew Wilcox's series "PageFlags cleanups" does that.
- Qi Zheng's series "minor fixes and supplement for ptdesc" does that
also. S390 is affected.
- Cleanups to our pagemap utility functions from Peter Xu in his series
"mm/treewide: Replace pXd_large() with pXd_leaf()".
- Nico Pache has fixed a few things with our hugepage selftests in his
series "selftests/mm: Improve Hugepage Test Handling in MM
Selftests".
- Also, of course, many singleton patches to many things. Please see
the individual changelogs for details.
* tag 'mm-stable-2024-03-13-20-04' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/akpm/mm: (435 commits)
mm/zswap: remove the memcpy if acomp is not sleepable
crypto: introduce: acomp_is_async to expose if comp drivers might sleep
memtest: use {READ,WRITE}_ONCE in memory scanning
mm: prohibit the last subpage from reusing the entire large folio
mm: recover pud_leaf() definitions in nopmd case
selftests/mm: skip the hugetlb-madvise tests on unmet hugepage requirements
selftests/mm: skip uffd hugetlb tests with insufficient hugepages
selftests/mm: dont fail testsuite due to a lack of hugepages
mm/huge_memory: skip invalid debugfs new_order input for folio split
mm/huge_memory: check new folio order when split a folio
mm, vmscan: retry kswapd's priority loop with cache_trim_mode off on failure
mm: add an explicit smp_wmb() to UFFDIO_CONTINUE
mm: fix list corruption in put_pages_list
mm: remove folio from deferred split list before uncharging it
filemap: avoid unnecessary major faults in filemap_fault()
mm,page_owner: drop unnecessary check
mm,page_owner: check for null stack_record before bumping its refcount
mm: swap: fix race between free_swap_and_cache() and swapoff()
mm/treewide: align up pXd_leaf() retval across archs
mm/treewide: drop pXd_large()
...
|
||
|---|---|---|
| .. | ||
| acpi | ||
| aoe | ||
| auxdisplay | ||
| blockdev | ||
| cgroup-v1 | ||
| cifs | ||
| device-mapper | ||
| gpio | ||
| hw-vuln | ||
| kdump | ||
| laptops | ||
| LSM | ||
| media | ||
| mm | ||
| namespaces | ||
| nfs | ||
| perf | ||
| pm | ||
| RAS | ||
| sysctl | ||
| thermal | ||
| abi-obsolete.rst | ||
| abi-removed.rst | ||
| abi-stable.rst | ||
| abi-testing.rst | ||
| abi.rst | ||
| bcache.rst | ||
| binderfs.rst | ||
| binfmt-misc.rst | ||
| bootconfig.rst | ||
| braille-console.rst | ||
| btmrvl.rst | ||
| bug-bisect.rst | ||
| bug-hunting.rst | ||
| cgroup-v2.rst | ||
| clearing-warn-once.rst | ||
| cpu-load.rst | ||
| cputopology.rst | ||
| dell_rbu.rst | ||
| devices.rst | ||
| devices.txt | ||
| dynamic-debug-howto.rst | ||
| edid.rst | ||
| efi-stub.rst | ||
| ext4.rst | ||
| features.rst | ||
| filesystem-monitoring.rst | ||
| highuid.rst | ||
| hw_random.rst | ||
| index.rst | ||
| init.rst | ||
| initrd.rst | ||
| iostats.rst | ||
| java.rst | ||
| jfs.rst | ||
| kernel-parameters.rst | ||
| kernel-parameters.txt | ||
| kernel-per-CPU-kthreads.rst | ||
| lcd-panel-cgram.rst | ||
| ldm.rst | ||
| lockup-watchdogs.rst | ||
| md.rst | ||
| module-signing.rst | ||
| mono.rst | ||
| numastat.rst | ||
| parport.rst | ||
| perf-security.rst | ||
| pmf.rst | ||
| pnp.rst | ||
| pstore-blk.rst | ||
| quickly-build-trimmed-linux.rst | ||
| ramoops.rst | ||
| rapidio.rst | ||
| README.rst | ||
| reporting-issues.rst | ||
| reporting-regressions.rst | ||
| rtc.rst | ||
| serial-console.rst | ||
| spkguide.txt | ||
| svga.rst | ||
| syscall-user-dispatch.rst | ||
| sysfs-rules.rst | ||
| sysrq.rst | ||
| tainted-kernels.rst | ||
| thunderbolt.rst | ||
| ufs.rst | ||
| unicode.rst | ||
| verify-bugs-and-bisect-regressions.rst | ||
| vga-softcursor.rst | ||
| video-output.rst | ||
| workload-tracing.rst | ||
| xfs.rst | ||
.. _readme:
Linux kernel release 6.x <http://kernel.org/>
=============================================
These are the release notes for Linux version 6. Read them carefully,
as they tell you what this is all about, explain how to install the
kernel, and what to do if something goes wrong.
What is Linux?
--------------
Linux is a clone of the operating system Unix, written from scratch by
Linus Torvalds with assistance from a loosely-knit team of hackers across
the Net. It aims towards POSIX and Single UNIX Specification compliance.
It has all the features you would expect in a modern fully-fledged Unix,
including true multitasking, virtual memory, shared libraries, demand
loading, shared copy-on-write executables, proper memory management,
and multistack networking including IPv4 and IPv6.
It is distributed under the GNU General Public License v2 - see the
accompanying COPYING file for more details.
On what hardware does it run?
-----------------------------
Although originally developed first for 32-bit x86-based PCs (386 or higher),
today Linux also runs on (at least) the Compaq Alpha AXP, Sun SPARC and
UltraSPARC, Motorola 68000, PowerPC, PowerPC64, ARM, Hitachi SuperH, Cell,
IBM S/390, MIPS, HP PA-RISC, Intel IA-64, DEC VAX, AMD x86-64 Xtensa, and
ARC architectures.
Linux is easily portable to most general-purpose 32- or 64-bit architectures
as long as they have a paged memory management unit (PMMU) and a port of the
GNU C compiler (gcc) (part of The GNU Compiler Collection, GCC). Linux has
also been ported to a number of architectures without a PMMU, although
functionality is then obviously somewhat limited.
Linux has also been ported to itself. You can now run the kernel as a
userspace application - this is called UserMode Linux (UML).
Documentation
-------------
- There is a lot of documentation available both in electronic form on
the Internet and in books, both Linux-specific and pertaining to
general UNIX questions. I'd recommend looking into the documentation
subdirectories on any Linux FTP site for the LDP (Linux Documentation
Project) books. This README is not meant to be documentation on the
system: there are much better sources available.
- There are various README files in the Documentation/ subdirectory:
these typically contain kernel-specific installation notes for some
drivers for example. Please read the
:ref:`Documentation/process/changes.rst <changes>` file, as it
contains information about the problems, which may result by upgrading
your kernel.
Installing the kernel source
----------------------------
- If you install the full sources, put the kernel tarball in a
directory where you have permissions (e.g. your home directory) and
unpack it::
xz -cd linux-6.x.tar.xz | tar xvf -
Replace "X" with the version number of the latest kernel.
Do NOT use the /usr/src/linux area! This area has a (usually
incomplete) set of kernel headers that are used by the library header
files. They should match the library, and not get messed up by
whatever the kernel-du-jour happens to be.
- You can also upgrade between 6.x releases by patching. Patches are
distributed in the xz format. To install by patching, get all the
newer patch files, enter the top level directory of the kernel source
(linux-6.x) and execute::
xz -cd ../patch-6.x.xz | patch -p1
Replace "x" for all versions bigger than the version "x" of your current
source tree, **in_order**, and you should be ok. You may want to remove
the backup files (some-file-name~ or some-file-name.orig), and make sure
that there are no failed patches (some-file-name# or some-file-name.rej).
If there are, either you or I have made a mistake.
Unlike patches for the 6.x kernels, patches for the 6.x.y kernels
(also known as the -stable kernels) are not incremental but instead apply
directly to the base 6.x kernel. For example, if your base kernel is 6.0
and you want to apply the 6.0.3 patch, you must not first apply the 6.0.1
and 6.0.2 patches. Similarly, if you are running kernel version 6.0.2 and
want to jump to 6.0.3, you must first reverse the 6.0.2 patch (that is,
patch -R) **before** applying the 6.0.3 patch. You can read more on this in
:ref:`Documentation/process/applying-patches.rst <applying_patches>`.
Alternatively, the script patch-kernel can be used to automate this
process. It determines the current kernel version and applies any
patches found::
linux/scripts/patch-kernel linux
The first argument in the command above is the location of the
kernel source. Patches are applied from the current directory, but
an alternative directory can be specified as the second argument.
- Make sure you have no stale .o files and dependencies lying around::
cd linux
make mrproper
You should now have the sources correctly installed.
Software requirements
---------------------
Compiling and running the 6.x kernels requires up-to-date
versions of various software packages. Consult
:ref:`Documentation/process/changes.rst <changes>` for the minimum version numbers
required and how to get updates for these packages. Beware that using
excessively old versions of these packages can cause indirect
errors that are very difficult to track down, so don't assume that
you can just update packages when obvious problems arise during
build or operation.
Build directory for the kernel
------------------------------
When compiling the kernel, all output files will per default be
stored together with the kernel source code.
Using the option ``make O=output/dir`` allows you to specify an alternate
place for the output files (including .config).
Example::
kernel source code: /usr/src/linux-6.x
build directory: /home/name/build/kernel
To configure and build the kernel, use::
cd /usr/src/linux-6.x
make O=/home/name/build/kernel menuconfig
make O=/home/name/build/kernel
sudo make O=/home/name/build/kernel modules_install install
Please note: If the ``O=output/dir`` option is used, then it must be
used for all invocations of make.
Configuring the kernel
----------------------
Do not skip this step even if you are only upgrading one minor
version. New configuration options are added in each release, and
odd problems will turn up if the configuration files are not set up
as expected. If you want to carry your existing configuration to a
new version with minimal work, use ``make oldconfig``, which will
only ask you for the answers to new questions.
- Alternative configuration commands are::
"make config" Plain text interface.
"make menuconfig" Text based color menus, radiolists & dialogs.
"make nconfig" Enhanced text based color menus.
"make xconfig" Qt based configuration tool.
"make gconfig" GTK+ based configuration tool.
"make oldconfig" Default all questions based on the contents of
your existing ./.config file and asking about
new config symbols.
"make olddefconfig"
Like above, but sets new symbols to their default
values without prompting.
"make defconfig" Create a ./.config file by using the default
symbol values from either arch/$ARCH/defconfig
or arch/$ARCH/configs/${PLATFORM}_defconfig,
depending on the architecture.
"make ${PLATFORM}_defconfig"
Create a ./.config file by using the default
symbol values from
arch/$ARCH/configs/${PLATFORM}_defconfig.
Use "make help" to get a list of all available
platforms of your architecture.
"make allyesconfig"
Create a ./.config file by setting symbol
values to 'y' as much as possible.
"make allmodconfig"
Create a ./.config file by setting symbol
values to 'm' as much as possible.
"make allnoconfig" Create a ./.config file by setting symbol
values to 'n' as much as possible.
"make randconfig" Create a ./.config file by setting symbol
values to random values.
"make localmodconfig" Create a config based on current config and
loaded modules (lsmod). Disables any module
option that is not needed for the loaded modules.
To create a localmodconfig for another machine,
store the lsmod of that machine into a file
and pass it in as a LSMOD parameter.
Also, you can preserve modules in certain folders
or kconfig files by specifying their paths in
parameter LMC_KEEP.
target$ lsmod > /tmp/mylsmod
target$ scp /tmp/mylsmod host:/tmp
host$ make LSMOD=/tmp/mylsmod \
LMC_KEEP="drivers/usb:drivers/gpu:fs" \
localmodconfig
The above also works when cross compiling.
"make localyesconfig" Similar to localmodconfig, except it will convert
all module options to built in (=y) options. You can
also preserve modules by LMC_KEEP.
"make kvm_guest.config" Enable additional options for kvm guest kernel
support.
"make xen.config" Enable additional options for xen dom0 guest kernel
support.
"make tinyconfig" Configure the tiniest possible kernel.
You can find more information on using the Linux kernel config tools
in Documentation/kbuild/kconfig.rst.
- NOTES on ``make config``:
- Having unnecessary drivers will make the kernel bigger, and can
under some circumstances lead to problems: probing for a
nonexistent controller card may confuse your other controllers.
- A kernel with math-emulation compiled in will still use the
coprocessor if one is present: the math emulation will just
never get used in that case. The kernel will be slightly larger,
but will work on different machines regardless of whether they
have a math coprocessor or not.
- The "kernel hacking" configuration details usually result in a
bigger or slower kernel (or both), and can even make the kernel
less stable by configuring some routines to actively try to
break bad code to find kernel problems (kmalloc()). Thus you
should probably answer 'n' to the questions for "development",
"experimental", or "debugging" features.
Compiling the kernel
--------------------
- Make sure you have at least gcc 5.1 available.
For more information, refer to :ref:`Documentation/process/changes.rst <changes>`.
- Do a ``make`` to create a compressed kernel image. It is also possible to do
``make install`` if you have lilo installed or if your distribution has an
install script recognised by the kernel's installer. Most popular
distributions will have a recognized install script. You may want to
check your distribution's setup first.
To do the actual install, you have to be root, but none of the normal
build should require that. Don't take the name of root in vain.
- If you configured any of the parts of the kernel as ``modules``, you
will also have to do ``make modules_install``.
- Verbose kernel compile/build output:
Normally, the kernel build system runs in a fairly quiet mode (but not
totally silent). However, sometimes you or other kernel developers need
to see compile, link, or other commands exactly as they are executed.
For this, use "verbose" build mode. This is done by passing
``V=1`` to the ``make`` command, e.g.::
make V=1 all
To have the build system also tell the reason for the rebuild of each
target, use ``V=2``. The default is ``V=0``.
- Keep a backup kernel handy in case something goes wrong. This is
especially true for the development releases, since each new release
contains new code which has not been debugged. Make sure you keep a
backup of the modules corresponding to that kernel, as well. If you
are installing a new kernel with the same version number as your
working kernel, make a backup of your modules directory before you
do a ``make modules_install``.
Alternatively, before compiling, use the kernel config option
"LOCALVERSION" to append a unique suffix to the regular kernel version.
LOCALVERSION can be set in the "General Setup" menu.
- In order to boot your new kernel, you'll need to copy the kernel
image (e.g. .../linux/arch/x86/boot/bzImage after compilation)
to the place where your regular bootable kernel is found.
- Booting a kernel directly from a storage device without the assistance
of a bootloader such as LILO or GRUB, is no longer supported in BIOS
(non-EFI systems). On UEFI/EFI systems, however, you can use EFISTUB
which allows the motherboard to boot directly to the kernel.
On modern workstations and desktops, it's generally recommended to use a
bootloader as difficulties can arise with multiple kernels and secure boot.
For more details on EFISTUB,
see "Documentation/admin-guide/efi-stub.rst".
- It's important to note that as of 2016 LILO (LInux LOader) is no longer in
active development, though as it was extremely popular, it often comes up
in documentation. Popular alternatives include GRUB2, rEFInd, Syslinux,
systemd-boot, or EFISTUB. For various reasons, it's not recommended to use
software that's no longer in active development.
- Chances are your distribution includes an install script and running
``make install`` will be all that's needed. Should that not be the case
you'll have to identify your bootloader and reference its documentation or
configure your EFI.
Legacy LILO Instructions
------------------------
- If you use LILO the kernel images are specified in the file /etc/lilo.conf.
The kernel image file is usually /vmlinuz, /boot/vmlinuz, /bzImage or
/boot/bzImage. To use the new kernel, save a copy of the old image and copy
the new image over the old one. Then, you MUST RERUN LILO to update the
loading map! If you don't, you won't be able to boot the new kernel image.
- Reinstalling LILO is usually a matter of running /sbin/lilo. You may wish
to edit /etc/lilo.conf to specify an entry for your old kernel image
(say, /vmlinux.old) in case the new one does not work. See the LILO docs
for more information.
- After reinstalling LILO, you should be all set. Shutdown the system,
reboot, and enjoy!
- If you ever need to change the default root device, video mode, etc. in the
kernel image, use your bootloader's boot options where appropriate. No need
to recompile the kernel to change these parameters.
- Reboot with the new kernel and enjoy.
If something goes wrong
-----------------------
If you have problems that seem to be due to kernel bugs, please follow the
instructions at 'Documentation/admin-guide/reporting-issues.rst'.
Hints on understanding kernel bug reports are in
'Documentation/admin-guide/bug-hunting.rst'. More on debugging the kernel
with gdb is in 'Documentation/dev-tools/gdb-kernel-debugging.rst' and
'Documentation/dev-tools/kgdb.rst'.