Handbook:SPARC/Blocks/Kernel

Architecture specific options

Activate the correct bus-support:

KERNEL Activating SBUS/UPA

'"`UNIQ--pre-00000000-QINU`"'

Of course enable support for the OBP:

KERNEL Activating OBP Support

'"`UNIQ--pre-00000003-QINU`"'

Enable SCSI-specific support:

KERNEL Activating SCSI-specific support

'"`UNIQ--pre-00000006-QINU`"'

To support the network card, select one of the following:

KERNEL Activating networking support

'"`UNIQ--pre-00000009-QINU`"'

With a 4-port Ethernet machine (10/100 or 10/100/1000) the port order is different from the one used by Solaris. Use sys-apps/ethtool to check the port link status.

When using a qla2xxx disk controller, install sys-block/qla-fc-firmware and add support for loading external firmware.

KERNEL Enabling external firmware

'"`UNIQ--pre-0000000C-QINU`"'

Set "External firmware blobs" to ql2200_fw.bin and "Firmware blobs root directory" to /lib/firmware/.

Compiling and installing

With the kernel configured, it is time to compile and install it. Exit the configuration and start the compilation process:

root #make && make modules_install

Note
It is possible to enable parallel builds using make -jX with X being the number of parallel tasks that the build process is allowed to launch. This is similar to the instructions about /etc/portage/make.conf earlier, with the MAKEOPTS variable.

When the kernel has finished compiling, check the size of the resulting file:

root #ls -lh arch/sparc/boot/image

-rw-r--r--    1 root     root         2.4M Oct 25 14:38 image

If the (uncompressed) size is bigger than 7.5 MB, reconfigure the kernel until it doesn't exceed these limits. One way of accomplishing this is by having most kernel drivers compiled as modules. Ignoring this can lead to a non-booting kernel.

Also, if the kernel is just a tad too big, try stripping it using the strip command:

root #strip -R .comment -R .note arch/sparc/boot/image

Finally copy the kernel image to /boot/.

root #cp arch/sparc/boot/image /boot/kernel-3.16.5-gentoo