[NTLUG:Discuss] Kernel

[Jack Snodgrass]

On Thu, 20 Mar 2003 15:06:38 -0500, Patrick Parks wrote:

> Cool, thanks for the reply.
> 
>> the System.map file is not generally used for much either. I 'think' 
>> that his is used for debugging. You need it if you debug something. 
>> When you do a compile yourself, a System.map file is created. I 
>> copy this to my /boot directory and add a -x.x.x. version number to it
> 
> do you soft link this also? ln -s System.map System.map-x.x.x?

On RedHat... ( not sure about the other distributions ) the boot up
scripts do:
ln -s -f System.map-`uname -r` /boot/System.map
and do the link for you. ;) 

> I have seen some references to recompiling the Kernel using RPM, is this
> recommended, and what is the difference in doing it this way vs   the
> old way?

I don't know about 'building' advantages.... but I can kind of see 
where being able to do an 
rpm -e ( to remove and rpm ) 
and 
rpm -Uhv ( to add them ) 
is ok. I've got a bunch of stuff that I installed just doing a 
make install and I don't know what I've got where. RPMs are 
useful for stuff like that. 

You can also do a rpm -v ( or --verify or something like that ) 
and you can make sure that the files on your system are what's 
in the RPM database. i.e. if you do a 
rpm -q -a | awk '{print "echo " $1 ";rpm -V " $1}' | sh | tee erase.me
you'll end up with a file that lists your RPM packages and any differences
that are there. if you see that top or ps or insmod, etc have changed,
you may have been hacked. 

Anyway... rpm can have it's usefulness.

>  
> Thanks again, I feel a little better :)

jack