1 2 Linux kernel release 1.0 3 4These are the release notes for linux version 1.0. Read them carefully, 5as they tell you what this is all about, explain how to install the 6kernel, and what to do if something goes wrong. 7 8WHAT IS LINUX? 9 10 Linux is a Unix clone for 386/486-based PCs written from scratch by 11 Linus Torvalds with assistance from a loosely-knit team of hackers 12 across the Net. It aims towards POSIX compliance. 13 14 It has all the features you would expect in a modern fully-fledged 15 Unix, including true multitasking, virtual memory, shared libraries, 16 demand loading, shared copy-on-write executables, proper memory 17 management and TCP/IP networking. 18 19 It is distributed under the GNU General Public License - see the 20 accompanying COPYING file for more details. 21 22INSTALLING the kernel: 23 24 - If you install the full sources, do a 25 26 cd /usr/src 27 tar xvf linux-1.0.tar 28 29 to get it all put in place. 30 31 - if you install by patching, you need a *clean* 0.99.15 source tree, 32 which presumably exists in /usr/src/linux. If so, to get the kernel 33 patched, just do a 34 35 cd /usr/src 36 patch -p0 < linux-1.0.patch 37 38 and you should be ok. You may want to remove the backup files (xxx~ 39 or xxx.orig), and make sure that there are no failed patches (xxx# or 40 xxx.rej). 41 42 - make sure your /usr/include/linux and /usr/include/asm directories 43 are just symlinks to the kernel sources: 44 45 cd /usr/include 46 rm -rf linux 47 rm -rf asm 48 ln -s /usr/src/linux/include/linux . 49 ln -s /usr/src/linux/include/asm . 50 51 - make sure you have no stale .o files and dependencies lying around: 52 53 cd /usr/src/linux 54 make mrproper 55 56 You should now have the sources correctly installed. 57 58CONFIGURING the kernel: 59 60 - do a "make config" to configure the basic kernel. "make config" 61 needs bash to work: it will search for bash in $BASH, /bin/bash and 62 /bin/sh (in that order), so hopefully one of those is correct. 63 64 NOTES on "make config": 65 - having unnecessary drivers will make the kernel bigger, and can 66 under some circumstances lead to problems: probing for a 67 nonexistent controller card may confuse your other controllers 68 - compiling the kernel with "-m486" for a number of 486-specific 69 will result in a kernel that still works on a 386: it may be 70 slightly larger and possibly slower by an insignificant amount, 71 but it should not hurt performance. 72 - A kernel with math-emulation compiled in will still use the 73 coprocessor if one is present: the math emulation will just 74 never get used in that case. The kernel will be slighly larger, 75 but will work on different machines regardless of whether they 76 have a math coprocessor or not. 77 - the "kernel hacking" configuration details usually result in a 78 bigger or slower kernel (or both), and can even make the kernel 79 less stable by configuring some routines to actively try to 80 break bad code to find kernel problems (kmalloc()). Thus you 81 should probably answer 'n' to the questions for a "production" 82 kernel. 83 84 - edit drivers/net/CONFIG to configure the networking parts of the 85 kernel. The comments should hopefully clarify it all. 86 87 - Check the top Makefile for further site-dependent configuration 88 (default SVGA mode etc). 89 90 - Finally, do a "make dep" to set up all the dependencies correctly. 91 92COMPILING the kernel: 93 94 - make sure you have gcc-2.4.5 or newer available. It seems older gcc 95 versions can have problems compiling newer versions of linux. If you 96 upgrade your compiler, remember to get the new binutils package too 97 (for as/ld/nm and company) 98 99 - do a "make zImage" to create a compressed kernel image. If you want 100 to make a bootdisk (without root filesystem or lilo), insert a floppy 101 in your A: drive, and do a "make zdisk". It is also possible to do 102 "make zlilo" if you have lilo installed to suit the kernel makefiles, 103 but you may want to check your particular lilo setup first. 104 105 - keep a backup kernel handy in case something goes wrong. 106 107 - In order to boot your new kernel, you'll need to copy the kernel 108 image (found in /usr/src/linux/zImage after compilation) to the place 109 where your regular bootable kernel is found. 110 111 For some, this is on a floppy disk, in which case you can "cp 112 /usr/src/linux/zImage /dev/fd0" to make a bootable floppy. 113 114 If you boot Linux from the hard drive, chances are you use LILO which 115 uses the kernel image as specified in the file /etc/lilo/config. The 116 kernel image file is usually /vmlinuz, or /zImage, or /etc/zImage. 117 To use the new kernel, copy the new image over the old one (save a 118 backup of the original!). Then, you MUST RERUN LILO to update the 119 loading map!! If you don't, you won't be able to boot the new kernel 120 image. 121 122 Reinstalling LILO is usually a matter of running /etc/lilo/install. 123 You may wish to edit /etc/lilo/config to specify an entry for your 124 old kernel image (say, /vmlinux.old) in case the new one does not 125 work. See the LILO docs for more information. 126 127 After reinstalling LILO, you should be all set. Shutdown the system, 128 reboot, and enjoy! 129 130 If you ever need to change the default root device, video mode, 131 ramdisk size, etc. in the kernel image, use the 'rdev' program (or 132 alternatively the LILO boot options when appropriate). No need to 133 recompile the kernel to change these parameters. 134 135 - reboot with the new kernel and enjoy. 136 137IF SOMETHING GOES WRONG: 138 139 - if you have problems that seem to be due to kernel bugs, please mail 140 them to me (Linus.Torvalds@Helsinki.FI), and possibly to any other 141 relevant mailing-list or to the newsgroup. The mailing-lists are 142 useful especially for SCSI and NETworking problems, as I can't test 143 either of those personally anyway. 144 145 - In all bug-reports, *please* tell what kernel you are talking about, 146 how to duplicate the problem, and what your setup is (use your common 147 sense). If the problem is new, tell me so, and if the problem is 148 old, please try to tell me when you first noticed it. 149 150 - if the bug results in a message like 151 152 unable to handle kernel paging request at address C0000010 153 Oops: 0002 154 EIP: 0010:xxxxxxxx 155 eax: xxxxxxxx ebx: xxxxxxxx ecx: xxxxxxxx edx: xxxxxxxx 156 esi: xxxxxxxx edi: xxxxxxxx ebp: xxxxxxxx 157 ds: xxxx es: xxxx fs: xxxx gs: xxxx 158 Pid: xx, process nr: xx 159 xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx 160 161 or similar kernel debugging information on your screen or in your 162 system log, please duplicate it *exactly*. The dump may look 163 incomprehensible to you, but it does contain information that may 164 help debugging the problem. The text above the dump is also 165 important: it tells something about why the kernel dumped code (in 166 the above example it's due to a bad kernel pointer) 167 168 - in debugging dumps like the above, it helps enourmously if you can 169 look up what the EIP value means. The hex value as such doesn't help 170 me or anybody else very much: it will depend on your particular 171 kernel setup. What you should do is take the hex value from the EIP 172 line (ignore the "0010:"), and look it up in the kernel namelist to 173 see which kernel function contains the offending address. 174 175 To find out the kernel function name, you'll need to find the system 176 binary associated with the kernel that exhibited the symptom. In the 177 case of compressed kernels, this will be 'linux/tools/zSystem', while 178 uncompressed kernels use the file 'tools/system'. To extract the 179 namelist and match it against the EIP from the kernel crash, do: 180 181 nm tools/zSystem | sort | less 182 183 This will give you a list of kernel addresses sorted in ascending 184 order, from which it is simple to find the function that contains the 185 offending address. Note that the address given by the kernel 186 debugging messages will not necessarily match exactly with the 187 function addresses (in fact, that is very unlikely), so you can't 188 just 'grep' the list: the list will, however, give you the starting 189 point of each kernel function, so by looking for the function that 190 has a starting address lower than the one you are searching for but 191 is followed by a function with a higher address you will find the one 192 you want. In fact, it may be a good idea to include a bit of 193 "context" in your problem report, giving a few lines around the 194 interesting one. 195 196 If you for some reason cannot do the above (you have a pre-compiled 197 kernel image or similar), telling me as much about your setup as 198 possible will help. 199 200
