For this example, we will be using kernel files from the http://kernel.org website.
You should be able to perform all but the last step without any possible harm to your system. The make install
command will modify your GRUB file(s), and so at a minimum, I would back those up. To be very safe, and since we already know I am paranoid, if you are going to install the new kernel, I would run all of these steps on a test machine.
This example assumes your computer has been installed as a full development system. You will need up-to-date versions of GCC
, make
, the QT development package, and others. If you have a current distribution elected to install the Software Development package (or equivalent), you are probably good to go. I suggest having at least 10 GB of file space available on the partition you plan to do the builds in; more if you are going to be creating a lot of kernel trees (the files in kernel 3.9.1 are using 6.5 GB).
The vmlinuz
, initramfs...