Compiling a vanilla kernel tarball from kernel.org on Debian Stable/Testing. Firstly you need to download a vanilla kernel tarball from the kernel.org website. Once you have the tarball downloaded, type tar -jxvf linux-3.3.tar.bz2 and then follow the sequence below. This sequence of commands will build a pair of Debian *.deb packages in your home folder that you may then install onto your system making the compilation and installation of a Linux kernel very easy.
neo@deusexmachina:~$ cd linux-3.3/ neo@deusexmachina:~$ make mrproper neo@deusexmachina:~$ make menuconfig neo@deusexmachina:~$ make-kpkg clean neo@deusexmachina:~$ fakeroot make-kpkg --initrd --append-to-version=-custom kernel_image kernel_headers neo@deusexmachina:~$ su Password: root@deusexmachina:/home/neo# dpkg -i *.deb |
Once this is completed, assuming you compiled the kernel in the ~/Downloads/linux-3.3/ folder, you would then type cd .. and then su to switch to the root user and type dpkg -i *.deb to install the Linux kernel and the kernel headers.
The listing below shows the Debian packages that are created in the folder below the kernel source folder. You do not need to build the kernel in the /usr/src folder, the ~/Downloads folder in your home folder is fine.
neo@deusexmachina:~/Documents$ ls -hula *.deb -rw-r--r-- 1 neo neo 7.5M Mar 25 18:52 linux-headers-3.3.0-custom_3.3.0-custom-10.00.Custom_amd64.deb -rw-r--r-- 1 neo neo 29M Mar 25 18:52 linux-image-3.3.0-custom_3.3.0-custom-10.00.Custom_amd64.deb neo@deusexmachina:~/Documents$ |
debian is fine for a server, also is sl/centos (the new vriseon that’s coming out soon should have a decent kernel for these boards). personally, for my home server i use freebsd, which has never failed for me, and even more stable than linux.but i’d never use ubuntu for a server. maybe the 10.04 lts. maybe..