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Ayush
Ayush

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Compiling Upstream Kernel Fedora

Introduction

I have been using Linux as my main OS for a long time now. I have always wanted to contribute to the Linux Kernel, but the task has always seemed daunting. But a few days ago, I found out about the Linux Kernel Mentorship Program and decided that this might be the best way I can get started with Linux Kernel Development.
There is a prerequisite course A Beginner’s Guide to Linux Kernel Development that needs to be completed before applying. It is written for Ubuntu, and I had to do some additional things to make it work for Fedora, so I decided to write and document it.

Install Dependencies

I use toolbox. So I will be building the kernel inside the container. Thus these dependencies need to be installed inside the container.

sudo dnf install ncurses-devel pesign bison flex qt5-qtbase-devel libXi-devel gcc gcc-c++ lld elfutils-libelf-devel openssl-devel dwarves
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Copy Current Config

I just used the current kernel config instead of starting from scratch.

cp /boot/config-uname -r* .config
make oldconfig
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You might need to select some new features that have been added in the kernel recently, but the default values are fine for the most part.

Build

Run the following:

make bzImage
make modules
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Install

We now switch back to the system terminal. Then run the following commands:

su
make modules_install
make install
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The new kernel should automatically show up in Grub now.

Additional Resources

Fedora Wiki

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