Saturday, November 26, 2016

Kernel upgrade

As I mention in another post, Kaby Lake processors are not supported by the kernel version currently used in Slackware 14.2 and -current (4.4.x). So, in order to use Slackware in a system using this architecture, it is need to upgrade the kernel to someone above 4.5. In this case I used the version 4.8.10, the last stable available in that moment.
In general the upgrading was done by following the procedure explained in Aliens Bob's wiki. In simple, it is as follow:

- Configure the EFI boot loader to show two options, one with the old kernel and other with the new one. This is a bit different at what is explained in the Alien's wiki, because he uses lilo instead of elilo (it is an old post), but the situation is almost the same, even easier. I did this before compiling because I wanted to be sure that the configuration and both booting options were working properly (I loaded the same kernel in both option).

- Download the Kernel sources.
$ wget https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v4.x/linux-4.8.10.tar.xz

- Check the source authenticity.
# wget https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v4.x/linux-4.8.10.tar.sign
# gpg --keyserver wwwkeys.pgp.net --recv-keys 38DBBDC86092693E
# gpg2 --verify linux-4.8.10.tar.sign

- Extract the source to a local directory.
# tar -Jxvf linux-4.8.10.tar.xz

- Download an initial .config file from a Slackware mirror.
$ wget http://mirrors.slackware.com/slackware/slackware64-current/testing/source/linux-4.6-configs/config-generic-4.6.x64

- Configure the Kernel compilation.
# make oldconfig
# make menuconfig

- Make and Install.
# make bzImage modules
# make modules_install

- Add the new Kernel to elilo.
# cp arch/x86/boot/bzImage /boot/efi/EFI/Slackware/vmlinuz-custom-4.8.10
And edit to image=vmlinuz-custom-4.8.10 the second boot option in elilo.conf.

- Reboot.

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