How to compile Linux Kernel on Debian VirtualBox Guest

Debian Packages

See https://osp4diss.vlsm.org/osp-103.html for more details.

Download Latest STABLE Kernel

Fetch the latest STABLE kernel from https://kernel.org/.

# START =============================================================
STABLE=$(wget -O - -o /dev/null https://www.kernel.org/finger_banner | awk '/stable/ {print $NF; exit}')
MAJOR=$(echo $STABLE | cut -d. -f1)
URL="https://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v$MAJOR.x"
KERNEL="linux-$STABLE.tar.xz"
TARBALL="linux-$STABLE.tar"
PGP="linux-$STABLE.tar.sign"
KURL="$URL/$KERNEL"
PURL="$URL/$PGP"

# ===================================================================
# Wget the latest kernel stable version
wget -c $KURL
# ===================================================================
# Wget the signature
wget -c $PURL
# ===================================================================
# Locate Keys
gpg --locate-keys torvalds@kernel.org gregkh@kernel.org

Sign Key (optional)

gpg --sign-key gregkh@kernel.org

Uncompress the file and verify

# ===================================================================
# Uncompress
unxz $KERNEL
# Verify
gpg --verify $PGP $TARBALL

Extract TAR file

# ===================================================================
tar xvf $TARBALL
# ===================================================================
cd linux-$STABLE

Overkilled/Bad Cleaning Habit

make distclean
make mrproper
make clean

Creating a SIMPLE SMALL “.config” file

If copying a wrong “.config” file, you might create a huge kernel with huge modules.
You might want consider to create a “.config” file from scratch with:

make x86_64_defconfig

Menuconfig

make menuconfig

Menuconfig (e.g., for cbkadal)

General setup  --->
  (-cbkadal-10) Local version - append to kernel release
  Kernel compression mode (XZ)  --->
  (cbkadal) Default hostname
  <*> Kernel .config support
  [*] Enable access to .config through /proc/config.gz
  <*> Enable kernel headers through /sys/kernel/kheaders.tar.xz
Processor type and features  --->
  [ ] EFI runtime service support 
File systems  --->
  <*> FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) support
  <*>   Character device in Userspace support
  <*>   Virtio Filesystem 
Security options  --->
  [ ] NSA SELinux Support
  [*] AppArmor support
  [*]   Enable introspection of sha1 hashes for loaded profiles
  [*]     Enable policy hash introspection by default
  First legacy 'major LSM' to be initialized
    (X) AppArmor
Kernel hacking  --->  
  Compile-time checks and compiler options  --->
    [*] Install uapi headers to usr/include

Compile (make)

time make

FYI Compile Time:
- Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-9400F CPU @ 2.90GHz
  - real 8m56.811s
  - user 14m58.976s
  - sys 2m21.272s
- Lenovo E135 (AMD E2-2000 APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics)
  - real 131m37,268s
  - user 231m34,071s
  - sys 26m15,916s
- Lenovo Yoga 300 (Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU N2840 @2.16GHz)
  - real 5062m4.962s
  - user 7597m16.164s
  - sys 806m13.830s

Install (root)

# USER: ROOT ============
make modules_install

make install

make headers_install INSTALL_HDR_PATH=/usr

Known Boot Errors

ata1.00: Read log 0x00 page 0x00 failed, Emask 0x1