[64studio-devel] how to customize or build an own 64studio kernel?/no poweroff?

[Daniel James]

Hi ma_pri,

> to power off the pc and make life easier (see below), I want to 
> customize or build an 64studio kernel. But how to do that?
> 
> Is there a howto available?

This is a good, simple one:

http://www.howtoforge.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21

> Is the kernel config file somewhere available?

Yes, they should already be in your /boot partition, for example:

/boot/config-2.6.17-1-multimedia-amd64-k8

> Where to get the real time patches?

They are already applied to our kernel source packages. If you are 
building from kernel.org sources you can get them here:

http://people.redhat.com/~mingo/realtime-preempt/

> Do I have to install or generate a kernel header file? After googling 
> and reading the Etch manual I am confused about kernel headers.

The Debian way of building kernel packages with make-kpkg can generate a 
headers package for you automatically, if you add the kernel_headers 
target to the command.

> When shutting down the pc (/sbin/shutdown -hP now) using the self baked 
> kernel, the pc shuts down and powers off. When shutting down the same 
> way using the 64studio kernel, the pc shuts down but does not power off 
> (screen shows still data, pc fans are still rotating etc).

I haven't seen that problem on any of our test machines - which relevant 
settings are different in your config?

> I would love to bake an optimized kernel to have 2 advantages:
> 1) To reduce boot time: Booting with the self baked kernel instead of 
> the 64studio kernel, the boot time until gdm appears needs about 40% 
> less time.

Right, probably because you have disabled modules that your system 
doesn't need - for RAID support, for example.

> 2) Fromt time to time I prefer working without X (doing other things 
> than making music). When using the 64studio kernel, there is tux as a 
> background picture which is sometimes disturbing.

You don't need to recompile the kernel to get rid of Tux :-)

In the file /etc/default/bootsplash there are these lines:

# Which consoles should be displayed with different bootsplash images
BOOTSPLASH_TTYS="1 2 3 4 5"

So you can modify this setting as you wish.

Cheers!

Daniel