Patching kernel

[mozzi]

Hi

If I want to patch the kernel with something that is not included, what would be the best way to go about it?

Mozzi

[thebigslide]

download the kernel source tarball to /usr/src/linux
download the patch .diff to /usr/src
cd /usr/src/linux
cat ../file.diff | patch -p1 --dry-run
if the patch is gzipped or bzip2'd, replace cat with gzcat or bzcat respectively.

If you get an error about 'cannot find file to patch at line1', and then a bunch of text,
try -p0 instead of -p1 or maybe even try -p2 if -p0 doesn't work.

This will tell you if the patch will apply cleanly. If there are FAILure's you have to either edit the source that has changed by hand, which takes little programming knowledge at best, or indepth knowledge of the kernel's inner workings at worst, depending on why the patch failed.

The kernel source won't actually be patched by the above command because of the --dry-run argument. If you want to proceed with the patch (no or few failures), remove the --dry-run bit.

Then you have to make mrproper and recompile the kernel. When you make mrproper, it will delete your configuration unless you backup the .config file in /usr/src/linux somewhere safe first.