telling portage about a manually installed kernel

braver · n00b Joined: 29 Dec 2006 Posts: 28

I've patched, compiled and installed my own kernel outside portage. How do I tell portage to use its headers/modules? For instance, it thinks the source is still in /usr/src/linux, although it's now elsewhere for the running kernel -- and so emerge nvidia-drivers fails, for example.

This leads to two situations --

(a) there's a totall ymanually compiled and installed kernel -- how do I tell portage about it? (current)

(b) I'm going to build a new kernel myself, different from gentoo's -- how do I prepare it for an ebuild? (future)

Cheers,
Alexy

M1Sports20 · Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2007 5:21 am Post subject:

First I believe /usr/src/linux should always be a symbolic link pointing to the directory where the kernel is install. For example,
ln -s /kernel/dir /usr/src/linux

then emerge nvidia-drivers should work as long as your kernel is setup for it

(b.) http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/handbook/handbook.xml?part=2&chap=1

kraix · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 20 Jun 2005 Posts: 93

sorry M1Sports but you got it backwards

whig · l33t Joined: 27 Nov 2004 Posts: 973 Location: New Zealand

I have this in /etc/portage/profile/package.provided, if there's a better way I would like to know.

Jake · Veteran Joined: 31 Jul 2003 Posts: 1132

Making the /usr/src/linux symlink will fix driver builds, but Portage still won't know about your kernel and will probably try to upgrade/install gentoo-sources. I believe the correct way to manually maintain a package is to unmerge the Portage version and add entries in package.provided and package.mask, although this probably isn't what you want to do. Portage just installs kernel sources for you. It's actually easier to use Portage than to do it completely manually. If you don't want the Gentoo patches, use sys-kernel/vanilla-sources. If you want something like mm, ck, or xen, they're all in Portage too.

Usually what I do for the symlink is keep my sources in /usr/src and make a relative link

madisonicus · Veteran Joined: 20 Sep 2006 Posts: 1130

aidanjt · Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2007 7:33 pm Post subject:

That's the problem, he didn't emerge *-sources, so portage doesn't know about it. Creating a symlink to the current sources will fix the problem for now, but any driver package you try to emerge will pull in current *-sources (varies depending on your profile).

If you want to go about writting your own ebuild for your flavour of sources, I suggest cracking open the ones already in portage to get an idea of how they work, and read up on this http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/handbook/handbook.xml?part=2.

i92guboj · Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2007 7:50 pm Post subject:

As already suggested, it would be best to use portage to install vanilla-sources, they are unpatched, so you can apply any desired patch manually. If you need a concrete version, and the ebuild is not in portage, just copy one to an overlay. If you dont want to upgrade any further, mask all versions >sys-kernel/vanilla-sources-<your desired version> in package.mask.

I cant think of any reaon to download and manage it manually.