8.10. Compilare un kernel
I kernel forniti da Debian includono il maggior numero possibile di funzionalità, così come il massimo numero di driver, per coprire lo spettro più ampio di configurazioni hardware esistenti. Ecco perché alcuni utenti preferiscono ricompilare il kernel per includere unicamente ciò di cui necessitano. Ci sono due ragioni per questa scelta. Primo, questo può ottimizzare il consumo di memoria perché il codice del kernel anche se non viene mai utilizzato occupa memoria senza motivo (e non viene mai posto nello spazio di swap, dato che utilizza la vera RAM), cosa che può diminuire le prestazioni complessive del sistema. Inoltre un kernel compilato localmente può anche limitare i rischi di sicurezza poiché solo una frazione del codice del kernel è compilato ed eseguito.
Ricompilare il kernel è inoltre necessario se si vuole utilizzare certe funzionalità che sono disponibili solo come patch (e non sono incluse nella versione standard del kernel).
8.10.1. Introduzione e prerequisiti
Non stupisce che Debian gestisca il kernel sotto forma di pacchetti, diversamente da come i kernel sono stati compilati ed installati tradizionalmente. Poiché il kernel rimane sotto il controllo del sistema di pacchettizazione può essere rimosso in modo pulito, o distribuito su diverse macchine. Inoltre, gli script associati con questi pacchetti automatizzano l'interazione con il bootloader ed il generatore initrd.
The upstream Linux sources contain everything needed to build a Debian package of the kernel. But you still need to install build-essential to ensure that you have the tools required to build a Debian package. Furthermore, the configuration step for the kernel requires the libncurses-dev package (formerly libncurses5-dev, which is now a transitional package). Finally, the fakeroot package will enable creation of the Debian package without using administrator's rights.
8.10.2. Ottenere i sorgenti
Like anything that can be useful on a Debian system, the Linux kernel sources are available in a package. To retrieve them, just install the
linux-source-version package. The
apt search ^linux-source command lists the various kernel versions packaged by Debian. The latest version is available in the
Unstable distribution: you can retrieve them without much risk (especially if your APT is configured according to the instructions of
Sezione 6.2.6, «Lavorare con più distribuzioni»). Note that the source code contained in these packages does not correspond precisely with that published by Linus Torvalds and the kernel developers; like all distributions, Debian applies a number of patches, which might (or might not) find their way into the upstream version of Linux. These modifications include backports of fixes/features/drivers from newer kernel versions, new features not yet (entirely) merged in the upstream Linux tree, and sometimes even Debian specific changes.
The remainder of this section focuses on the 5.10 version of the Linux kernel, but the examples can, of course, be adapted to the particular version of the kernel that you want.
We assume the linux-source-5.10 package has been installed. It contains /usr/src/linux-source-5.10.tar.xz, a compressed archive of the kernel sources. You must extract these files in a new directory (not directly under /usr/src/, since there is no need for special permissions to compile a Linux kernel): ~/kernel/ is appropriate.
$ mkdir ~/kernel; cd ~/kernel
$ tar -xaf /usr/src/linux-source-5.10.tar.xz
To build a kernel from the pristine sources, just download the tarball of the version of your choice from
kernel.org, verify the integrity after importing the kernel maintainers key, and then proceed as described in the following chapters.
8.10.3. Configurare il kernel
I passi successivi consistono nella configurazione del kernel secondo le proprie necessità. La procedura esatta dipende dagli obiettivi.
When recompiling a more recent version of the kernel (possibly with an additional patch), the configuration will most likely be kept as close as possible to that proposed by Debian. In this case, and rather than reconfiguring everything from scratch, it is sufficient to copy the
/boot/config-version file (the version is that of the kernel currently used, which can be found with the
uname -r command) into a
.config file in the directory containing the kernel sources. Make sure to read sidebar
TIP Missing debian/certs/debian-uefi-certs.pem in this case.
$ cp /boot/config-5.10.0-8-amd64 ~/kernel/linux-source-5.10/.config
Se non si necessita di cambiare la configurazione, è possibile fermarsi qui e saltare alla
Sezione 8.10.4, «Compilazione e creazione del pacchetto». Se invece è necessario modificarla, o se si è deciso di riconfigurare tutto da zero, è necessario prendersi del tempo per configurare il kernel. Ci sono varie interfacce dedicate nella directory dei sorgenti del kernel che possono essere richiamate utilizzando il comando
make target, dove
target sarà uno dei valori descritti di seguito.
make menuconfig compiles and executes a text-mode interface (this is where the libncurses-dev package is required) which allows navigating the options available in a hierarchical structure. Pressing the Space key changes the value of the selected option, and Enter validates the button selected at the bottom of the screen; Select returns to the selected sub-menu; Exit closes the current screen and moves back up in the hierarchy; Help will display more detailed information on the role of the selected option. The arrow keys allow moving within the list of options and buttons. To exit the configuration program, choose Exit from the main menu. The program then offers to save the changes you've made; accept if you are satisfied with your choices.
Other interfaces have similar features, but they work within more modern graphical interfaces; such as make xconfig which uses a Qt graphical interface, and make gconfig which uses GTK+. The former requires qtbase5-dev, while the latter depends on libglade2-dev and libgtk2.0-dev.
Quando si utilizza una di queste interfacce di configurazione, è sempre una buona idea partire da una configurazione predefinita ragionevole. Il kernel fornisce tali configurazioni in arch/arch/configs/*_defconfig e si può attivare la configurazione selezionata con un comando come make x86_64_defconfig (in caso di un PC a 64-bit) opuure make i386_defconfig (in caso di un PC a 32-bit).
8.10.4. Compilazione e creazione del pacchetto
Once the kernel configuration is ready, a simple make deb-pkg will generate up to 5 Debian packages:
- linux-image-version
contains the kernel image and the associated modules,
- linux-headers-version
contains the header files required to build external modules,
- linux-firmware-image-version
contains the firmware files needed by some drivers (this package might be missing when you build from the kernel sources provided by Debian),
- linux-image-version-dbg
contains the debugging symbols for the kernel image and its modules (only created if CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO=y), and
- linux-libc-dev
contains headers relevant to some user-space libraries like GNU glibc.
The version is defined by the concatenation of the upstream version (as defined by the variables VERSION, PATCHLEVEL, SUBLEVEL, and EXTRAVERSION in the Makefile), of the LOCALVERSION configuration parameter, and of the LOCALVERSION environment variable. The package version reuses the same version string with an appended revision that is regularly incremented (and stored in .version), except if you override it with the KDEB_PKGVERSION environment variable.
$ make deb-pkg LOCALVERSION=-falcot KDEB_PKGVERSION=$(make kernelversion)-1
[...]
$ ls ../*.deb
../linux-headers-5.10.46-falcot_5.10.46-1_amd64.deb
../linux-image-5.10.46-falcot_5.10.46-1_amd64.deb
../linux-image-5.10.46-falcot-dbg_5.10.46-1_amd64.deb
../linux-libc-dev_5.10.46-1_amd64.deb
The whole process requires around 20 GB of free space, at least 8 GB of RAM, and several hours of compilation (utilizing one core) for a standard amd64 Debian kernel. These requirements can be drastically reduced by disabling the debug information using CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO=n, but this will make it impossible to trace kernel errors (“oops”) using gdb and also stop the creation of the linux-image-version-dbg package.
8.10.5. Compilare moduli esterni
Some modules are maintained outside of the official Linux kernel. To use them, they must be compiled alongside the matching kernel. A number of common third party modules are provided by Debian in dedicated packages, such as vpb-driver-source (extra modules for Voicetronix telephony hardware) or leds-alix-source (driver of PCEngines ALIX 2/3 boards).
These packages are many and varied, apt-cache rdepends module-assistant$ can show the list provided by Debian. However, a complete list isn't particularly useful since there is no particular reason for compiling external modules except when you know you need it. In such cases, the device's documentation will typically detail the specific module(s) it needs to function under Linux.
For example, let's look at the dahdi-source package: after installation, a .tar.bz2 of the module's sources is stored in /usr/src/. While we could manually extract the tarball and build the module, in practice we prefer to automate all this using the DKMS framework (Dynamic Kernel Module Support). Most modules offer the required DKMS integration in a package ending with a -dkms suffix. In our case, installing dahdi-dkms is all that is needed to compile the kernel module for the current kernel provided that we have the linux-headers-* package matching the installed kernel. For instance, if you use linux-image-amd64, you would also install linux-headers-amd64.
$ sudo apt install dahdi-dkms
[...]
Setting up dkms (2.8.4-3) ...
Setting up linux-headers-5.10.0-8-amd64 (5.10.46-4) ...
/etc/kernel/header_postinst.d/dkms:
dkms: running auto installation service for kernel 5.10.0-8-amd64:.
Setting up dahdi-dkms (1:2.11.1.0.20170917~dfsg-7.4) ...
Loading new dahdi-2.11.1.0.20170917~dfsg-7.4 DKMS files...
Building for 5.10.0-8-amd64
Building initial module for 5.10.0-8-amd64
Done.
dahdi_dummy.ko:
Running module version sanity check.
- Original module
- No original module exists within this kernel
- Installation
- Installing to /lib/modules/5.10.0-8-amd64/updates/dkms/
dahdi_dynamic_eth.ko:
Running module version sanity check.
- Original module
- No original module exists within this kernel
- Installation
- Installing to /lib/modules/5.10.0-8-amd64/updates/dkms/
[...]
DKMS: install completed.
$ sudo dkms status
dahdi, 2.11.1.0.20170917~dfsg-7.4, 5.10.0-8-amd64, x86_64: installed
$ sudo modinfo dahdi_dummy
filename: /lib/modules/5.10.0-8-amd64/updates/dkms/dahdi_dummy.ko
license: GPL v2
author: Robert Pleh <[email protected]>
description: Timing-Only Driver
depends: dahdi
retpoline: Y
name: dahdi_dummy
vermagic: 5.10.0-8-amd64 SMP mod_unload modversions
parm: debug:int
8.10.6. Applicare una patch al kernel
Alcune funzionalità non sono incluse nel kernel standard perché non mature o per un mancato accordo tra il manutentore del codice sorgente ed i manutentori del kernel. Alcune funzionalità possono essere distribuite come patch che chiunque può applicare liberamente ai sorgenti del kernel.
Debian sometimes provides some of these patches in linux-patch-* packages, but they often don't make it into stable releases (sometimes for the very same reasons that they are not merged into the official upstream kernel). These packages install files in the /usr/src/kernel-patches/ directory.
To apply one or more of these installed patches, use the patch command in the sources directory then start compilation of the kernel as described above. The following shows an old example using linux-patch-grsecurity2 and linux-source-4.9.
$ cd ~/kernel/linux-source-4.9
$ make clean
$ zcat /usr/src/kernel-patches/diffs/grsecurity2/grsecurity-3.1-4.9.11-201702181444.patch.gz | patch -p1
Notare che una patch potrebbe non funzionare con ogni versione del kernel: è possibile che patch fallisca quando la applica ai sorgenti del kernel. Un messaggio d'errore sarà visualizzato e fornirà alcuni dettagli a proposito del fallimento. In questo caso, si deve far riferimento alla documentazione disponibile nel pacchetto Debian della patch (nella directory /usr/share/doc/linux-patch-*/). In molti casi il manutentore indica per quali versioni del kernel è stata realizzata la patch.
