On Mon, 27 Sep 2004, Brett Viren wrote:

> The .config file is created when running "make config", "make
> menuconfig" or "make xconfig" (prior to actually building the kernel).

Sure, it *would* be - *if* I had intended building a kernel.

> It needs to be there and correctly reflect how the kernel is
> actually built for most out-of-kernel drivers to work.

Exactly.  Which is why I'm asking whether we get the corresponding
config file supplied when we install a pre-built SL kernel...

> Some kernels store their config in /proc/config.gz,

Thanks - I don't see anything like that on this SL installation.
However, that prompted me to look around some more, and I found

   /boot/config-2.4.21-20.EL

which seems as if it's the SL answer to the earlier question.

> mkdir /usr/src/linux
> zcat /proc/config.gz > /usr/src/linux/.config

Well, the additional kernel module that I'm playing with, has a
Makefile which derives the running kernel version (KVERS) from
$(shell uname -r) , and then constructs a kernel source location
(KSRC) as /lib/modules/$(KVERS)/build i.e currently for me that's
/lib/modules/2.4.21-20.EL/build

When I check that out on SL, I find that it's a symlink to
../../../usr/src/linux-2.4.21-20.EL   (typical hall of mirrors!)

There's actually a symlink /usr/src/linux-2.4 pointing to that.

But your /usr/src/linux doesn't exist - nor would this Makefile
be looking for it even if it did.

As I said before - I had actually located a whole box of config files,
they're in  /usr/src/linux.../configs/kernel-...-.config

And I had identified the appropriate one and copied it to
/usr/src/linux-2.4/.config , and thus completed the original task.

However, it now seems that this file /boot/config-2.4.21-20.EL would
have been just as good as the starting point.

cheers