How to Install a New Kernel

How to Install a New Kernel#

Deploy Overview#

Alright, at this point, we expect that you have already learned how to compile the Linux kernel from the source and manage your config file as described in the previous tutorials (if not, please, read those tutorials first). Now that you know how to compile your new kernel, you probably want to know how to install it to a Linux-based system. Don’t worry, kw is here to rescue you.

One of the most important features associated with kw is managing the deployment of new kernels to a target machine. We have three types of target machines

  1. Remote: Any machine you can access as a root via ssh.

  2. Local: A machine that you have direct access to. E.g., your laptop or desktop.

  3. Virtual Machine (VM): A QEMU virtual machine whose image file you can access.

Don’t worry; you will learn how to handle each of these targets!

Kw Deploy Limitations#

Let’s start by setting the expectations around kw deploy and describing its current limitations:

  • The target machine must be Debian, Fedora or Arch Linux family (by family, we are talking about derivative distros). For example, Ubuntu and Mint are derivated from Debian, meaning that kw supports those distros.

  • Right now, kw only supports the GRUB2 bootloader.

Notice that these limitations can change in the future; consider helping us to improve this in the future.

Tutorial Assumptions#

Now that you know kw limitations, we also assume the following tasks are completed:

  • You already compiled your kernel

  • You have a working .config file

  • For deploying remotely, you need to have root access to the target machine via ssh.

  • All commands in this tutorial must be executed inside a kernel tree.

Note

We artificially defined those assumptions to make this tutorial smaller. Still, kw deploy has many features, do not hesitate to look at the man page more for more details.

Remote Machine Deploy#

Before trying to deploy your new kernel, let’s first update kworkflow.config and remote.config by making sure that you set the following options correctly:

kw remote --add my-x86-test-system root@<IP or NAME>:<PORT>

Note

If you don’t know anything about kworkflow.config or remote.config, take a look at kw configuration and kw-remote.

Now, make sure that you can use kw to login into your target machine:

kw ssh

If you cannot ssh to the machine, stop here and figure out why you cannot ssh to the target machine; then, come back.

Note

If it is your first time trying to ssh to the remote machine, try the following command inside it: sed -i ‘/#PermitRootLogin without-password/cPermitRootLogin yes’ /etc/ssh/sshd_config && systemctl restart sshd

If your ssh key has a password, we recommend you to use the below commands before you try to deploy your new kernel:

ssh-agent bash
ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa

Since this is the first time that you deploy a new kernel using kw, let’s start with a command that configures your target machine:

kw deploy --setup

Note

The steps above represent a one-time setup.

Under the hood, the command above will:

  • Make sure that the ssh config is correct.

  • Install required packages in the target machine.

  • Install a small part of kw in the remote.

After the previous command completes, you can deploy any changes by issuing:

kw deploy

Or, if you prefer, you can use the short version of the deploy command, which is:

kw d

That’s it, kernel installed! You just need to reboot your target system and select your new kernel in the GRUB2 menu.

Local Machine Deploy#

In this scenario, a target kernel might be the one in your host machine. For example, suppose that you want to install the latest stable kernel from Torvalds’ tree in your laptop; in this case, kw deploy --local is what you are looking for.

Ok, in this case, let’s start by entering in your kernel code:

cd /path/to/kernel

Now, you can use:

kw deploy --local

Note

This requires using sudo, and you will need to select the target kernel after rebooting your system.

If you only deploy your kernel to a local machine, you can change the option default_deploy_target to local in your .kw/kworflow.config file.

Improving your Workflow#

If you are working on something and you need to build and deploy new kernel versions constantly, you can speed up your workflow with these two changes:

  1. Open your .kw/kworflow.config and set reboot_after_deploy to yes.

  2. Use kw bd which will build your kernel and deploy after that.

In summary with these two changes, your workflow will be:

  1. Change something in the kernel code.

  2. Run kw bd.

  3. Validate your change in the target machine.

  4. Go back to step 1 if you are not happy with your change.

Keep in Mind#

Remember that we just scratched the surface in this tutorial, and you can learn more by reading kw’s man page. Additionally, consider helping us to make this feature more generic and robust to other users.