About compiling Linux kernel in Debian Live

Question

Hi all,

This is my first time compiling Linux kernel. I am using Debian Live. I used kernel-package to compile and I also added a new system call to return an arbitrary integer value greater than zero.

Everything went fine and I got both headers and image .deb files. When I tried to install them with dpkg, there was a warning that said I needed to configure LILO. I then aborted the installation and looked for LILO to find out that Debian Live got neither LILO nor GRUB. I installed GRUB, but it was not installed on my sda1 (USB disk running Debain Live), it said that it was not a proper block device. Debian Live uses squashfs (a file system).

Then, I ignored bootloader and installed the custom kernel. After I rebooted my computer, I was directly booted to the old Debain Live and my system call returns -1.

Please provide some solutions guys.

Thanks,

Answer 1

Debian Live is not a suitable base for you do to your own kernel development on. As you've found, it doesn't contain the tools needed to rebuild itself (that's not what its designed to do).

Install the regular Debian distribution (perhaps inside a virtualisation environment like VMWare Server or VirtualBox). Do your kernel development there.