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Ok guys, just keep a lid on it. |
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|
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I think the symlink is the best way of handling the situation. As far as I |
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understand it, the symlink used to be there for when glibc was compiled, to |
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know what features the kernel supports etc... Since then we have popped out |
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"linux-headers" which basically solves this problem, and had you _not_ had to |
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compile anything the symlink could point to wherever the hell you wanted. |
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|
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Now some packages it seems need to find out which kernel they are going to |
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have to operate within, and there is no way of finding this out except being |
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told (i.e. a symlink to the target kernel to be built for, or some kind of |
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variable set before compilation). I honestly think the symlink is the best |
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way of doing this and the env variable just complicates things. |
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|
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The reason kernel modules cannot link to the "linux-headers" sources is |
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because they are not the running sources. If linux-headers didnt exist, every |
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time your recompiled your kernel you would have to recompile half your system |
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(as I understand it). |
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|
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Also, the reason Linux told people to do all those three steps were because |
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that some _broken_ distros were using the /usr/src/linux symlink to build |
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glibc against and therefore breaking glibc when the kernel was upgraded. He |
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quoted that method because, even though it may not be the best method, it |
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works with most (even broken) distros. |
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|
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If the /usr/src/linux symlink was not pointing to the current linux sources, |
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you would need to merge kernel related packages _after_ reboot. So when you |
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are installing you would need to boot into your own kernel to build, say, |
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network card drivers. Chicken and egg, cant fetch pcmcia-cs to install your |
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network card. |
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And by the way, the symlink is NOT obsolete, because there has been no better |
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method to address this situation. |
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|
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Thanks, |
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Chris. |
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-- |
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It is easier to fix Unix than to live with NT. |
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-- |
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gentoo-dev@g.o mailing list |