Obtaining the Kernel Source

The current Linux source code is always available in both a complete tarball and an incremental patch from the official home of the Linux kernel, http://www.kernel.org.

Unless you have a specific reason to work with an older version of the Linux source, you always want the latest code. The repository at kernel.org is the place to get it, along with additional patches from a number of leading kernel developers.

Installing the Kernel Source

The kernel tarball is distributed in both GNU zip (gzip) and bzip2 format. Bzip2 is the default and preferred format, as it generally compresses quite a bit better than gzip. The Linux kernel tarball in bzip2 format is named linux-x.y.z.tar.bz2, where x.y.z is the version of that particular release of the kernel source. After downloading the source, uncompressing and untarring it is simple. If your tarball is compressed with bzip2, run

$ tar xvjf linux-x.y.z.tar.bz2

If it is compressed with GNU zip, run

$ tar xvzf linux-x.y.z.tar.gz

This uncompresses and untars the source to the directory linux-x.y.z.

Where to Install and Hack on the Source The kernel source is typically installed in /usr/src/linux. Note that you should not use this source tree for development. The kernel version that your C library is compiled against is often linked to this tree. Besides, you do not want to have to be root to make changes to the kernelinstead, work out of your home directory and use root only to install new kernels. Even when installing a new kernel, /usr/src/linux should remain untouched.

Using Patches

Throughout the Linux kernel community, patches are the lingua franca of communication. You will distribute your code changes in patches as well as receive code from others as patches. More relevant to the moment is the incremental patches that are provided to move from one version of the kernel source to another. Instead of downloading each large tarball of the kernel source, you can simply apply an incremental patch to go from one version to the next. This saves everyone bandwidth and you time. To apply an incremental patch, from inside your kernel source tree, simply run

$ patch p1 < ../patch-x.y.z

Generally, a patch to a given version of the kernel is applied against the previous version.

Generating and applying patches is discussed in much more depth in later chapters.