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Boot Disk

Burn image file to USB or CD-ROM, for a boot, in case the system crashes.

mkbootdisk –iso –device myimage.iso <version-number>.version

Clean up

To clean up object and dependency files, which are remains of previous compilation.

make clean

Kernel Tunable Parameters

These tunable parameters controlled by the files in /proc/sys directory and /etc/sysctl.conf file.

  • sysctl -p: read parameters from the /ect/sysctl.conf file
  • sysctl -w: to change specific parameters
  • sysctl -a: lists all available changeable parameters
#sysctl -w kernel.domainname="ananova.com"

#sysctl -w net.ipv4.ip_forward=1

New Kernel Installation

  • Download binary version in the form of RPM packages from the distribution website and install. The most comfortable way as software utility automatically download and install distribution prepared kernel package.
  • Download the latest original kernel source code from kernel.org, which is a compressed archive (.tar.tz) having prefix ‘linux' with the version name as a suffix. Decompress and archive with the following commands: 
    cd arkkernel

tar -xzvf linux-5.6.16.tar.gz

    The RedHat and Fedora SRPMS Kernel packages install to the /usr/src/redhat directory and use SPEC files to extract the kernel version. The advantage is enhanced configuration by adding support to devices such as Bluetooth.

Manual Kernel Installation using RPM

A series of RPM packages beginning with the word ‘kernel' and updated system configuration files needed for manual new kernel installation.

rpm -qa | grep kernel


Lists kernel packages already installed on a system

The distributions provide CPU optimized Kernel packages that include multiprocessor support. The x86 includes x86 versions, and the 64-bit distribution holds x86_64 versions.

Kernel Configuration Tools

For settings .config file in the kernel source directory.

  • config: It is a simple configuring script providing line-based prompts for different configuration options
  • menuconfig: It gives a cursor-based menu for different configuration categories
  • xconfig (qconf): The QT (KDE) based GUI kernel configuration tool. It requires QT libraries installed.
  • gconfig (gkc): It runs gkc tool with GTK interface

Next Page: Kernel Configuration Features