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Tutorials for backporting kernel patches

Submitted by kushalkoolwal
on August 15, 2006 - 8:08pm

Hi,

Recently I came to know there is a feature that is going to available in Kernel 2.6.19, but I guess I am not willing to upgrade my current kernel from 2.6.17 to 2.6.19. But I want that functionality. So many people suggested me to take the patches of 2.6.19 and backport it to 2.6.17. Now how can I do that? I tried searching on goole, "backporting patches linux" but nothing meaningful came out.

I would really appreciate if I can get an example of backporting a sample patch or a good tutorial which mentions step-by-step how to backport?

Thanks

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easy

strcmp
on
August 16, 2006 - 1:31pm
  1. apply the patch to your sources
  2. fix up the patch conflicts
  3. if the changes were too big: rewrite the relevant kernel parts or generate glue code, optionally import more code from the newer source and restart at step 1
  4. test on a scratch machine (a spare computer without important data), remove bugs -- this step may involve advanced debugging capabilities
  5. repeat on more machines
  6. generate a new patch by diffing your result with the original sources
  7. publish

Step 6?

kushalkoolwal
on
August 16, 2006 - 3:29pm

Ok, great. That gives me some idea and I have already started working on it. Can you give some idea what do you mean by glue code?

Also, can you give me the command for step 6. Suppose somehow I am able to backport it(after resolving conflicts and everything), and now I want to generate the new patch based on my kernel soruces, how should I do that?

Thank you once again.

Why aren't you willing to mov

Anonymous (not verified)
on
August 16, 2006 - 4:14pm

Why aren't you willing to move to 2.6.19? Vendor patched kernel?

Actually yes. There are certa

kushalkoolwal
on
August 17, 2006 - 4:40pm

Actually yes. There are certain patches which works only with the kernel version that I am using and those are from my hardware vendor for some specific hardware. Those patches are also big. That's why I want to learn how to port small patches plus it would be nice to learn about backporting.

Thanks

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