How do I compile a kernel in SLED11 SP2?

SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop SLED Updates
1

I’ve been asked to test a staging driver in the latest kernel to see if it’s stable. The environment I need to test it in is SLED11 SP2. I’ve been using Linux for many many years, but have never had an occasion to use staging drivers (or compile a kernel) in the past and could use some pointers.

I’m following this tutorial:
http://www.howtoforge.com/kernel_compilation_suse

The staging drivers I need to test are in this kernel:
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.0/testing/linux-3.4-rc5.tar.bz2

My first question is, do I need to compile the whole kernel to see if one driver works? If so I have some questions about the tutorial.

The tutorial says to install ncurses-devel, which isn’t on the DVD. This system is not registered so YAST isn’t getting anything off the online repos. I used the version for OpenSUSE 11.1 here: ftp://rpmfind.net/linux/opensuse/distribution/11.1/repo/oss/suse/x86_64/ncurses-devel-5.6-89.16.x86_64.rpm

Will this work for SLED11? If not, do I need to register in order to get the correct ncurses-devel for this system?

Using the version of ncurses-devel that I am everything goes fine until compiling the RPM. There are no errors but the resulting RPM is for the same kernel version as comes with SP2 (that being 3.0.13-0.27) rather than 3.4-rc5. I double checked to make sure I ran make from the correct directory, I’m not sure what went wrong, any ideas?

When trying to install the resulting RPM I get hundreds of conflicts with existing packages of the same version numbers. What do I do about these?

2

Hi
You can do it all from the command line, have a look at this post;
http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/pre-release-beta/421320-questions-help-regarding-kernel-2-6-31-a.html#post2036276

lwfinger is one of the wireless kernel developers…

If you decide on adding development files, download and add the SLE 11
SP2 SDK iso image as a local repository.

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 12.1 (x86_64) Kernel 3.1.10-1.9-desktop
up 1 day 17:36, 4 users, load average: 0.04, 0.04, 0.05
CPU Intel i5 CPU M520@2.40GHz | Intel Arrandale GPU