Thanks for your response and a nice guide to have custom built Ubuntu kernel.

I wonder how do you deal with kernel options that appear in newer kernels? Kernelconfig oldconfig asks to specify values for them at the first run, but doesn’t remember them. As the result it asks again to specify new options at compile time. I tried to backup config.common.ubuntu and generic and got into even more troubles.

After an initial compile, is it possible to do a faster recompile with a few minor changes (i.e. can a recompile use previously compiled bits) or does it need to be re-compiled from scratch each time?

Thanks.

It should be four in your case.

As for your first question:
Changed the memory setting:
Processor type and features —> High Memory Support —> 64GB

Processor:
Processor type and features —> Processor family —> Core 2/newer Xeon

Disable General x86, I compiled for my processor so no need for general x86 support:
Processor type and features —> Generic x86 support

Disabled Toshiba support as my laptop is not a Toshiba.
Disabled certain filesystems, as I know I will never use them in my environment.
Disabled certain network options, again I will never need them (IPX for example)

If compiled for your processor, technically it should perform better, but I doubt if you will notice it. The kernel doesn’t have your specific kernel optimization. You can choose the option Opteron/Athlon64/Hammer/K8 in the Processor type option though.

It’s not so much you are customizing an Ubuntu kernel, you are customizing a kernel. The difference between the Ubuntu kernel and a vanilla kernel are patches the Ubuntu kernel team have approved. I don’t really have one or two online resources myself. For the customization I just lean on my experience and Google.

I hope it helps a bit.

(1) In the previous article you wrote:
“I wrote this how to because my laptop has 4GB of internal memory and with the default kernel that ships with Ubuntu Karmic the entire 4GB is not addressed.”
and
“Besides the change of processor type in the configuration I also select support for 64GB as my laptop has 4GB, which is the main reason I started compiling my own kernels. I have some other changes but that’s beyond this article.”
Could you please explain a little bit more about what you did? If a kernel is compiled for a specific processor does it perform better? Is it possible for me to configure the kernel for my AMD Phenom and, if so, how/where? Can you suggest any further online resources for customizing an Ubuntu kernel?

(2) The step:
skipabi=true skipmodule=true fakeroot debian/rules binary-core2
takes a long time to compile on my quad-core AMD processor (about an hour). If I wish to make a small change to the source and re-compile, is there a faster way of doing this?

Thanks,
Mike

Thanks for both tutorials! Really great job. But I think I found another typo:

“linux-image-2.6.31-15_2.6.31-15.50_all.deb”

should be

linux-image-2.6.31-15_2.6.31-15.50_i386.deb

Regards,
Adam