compiling and booting 2.6.34

[Stefan Bader]

On 05/28/2010 09:55 PM, Lucio Crusca wrote:
> Stefan Bader wrote:
>> Hi Lucio,
>>
>> if you wanted to try a 2.6.34 kernel with just the most similar config to
>> the standard Ubuntu config, it might be simpler to just use one of the
>> pre-compiled kernels from http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/
> 
> Thanks Stefan, I wasn't even aware of that url...
> 
>> Try to boot with acpi_osi="!Windows 2009" as a kernel argument and see
>> whether this does not revive the fn+f8 combination.
> 
> I'll try as soon as I have 2.6.34 installed, so that I can run both tests.
> 
> Out of curiosity: do the mainline kernels include significant patches to the 
> corresponding vanilla ones? In other words, are Ubuntu patches cosmetic ones 
> (or performance centric) or do they add some hardware compatibility 
> otherwise not obtainable with unpoatched vanilla sources? Yet another 
> rewording of the question: do I have any chance to compile a vanilla kernel 
> and see it boot without applying Ubuntu patches?
> 
The mainline kernels are exactly the same as the vanilla kernels with the same
version. The Ubuntu kernels have some additional patches and drivers but those
should not prevent booting. I suspect your problem might have been a missing or
incorrectly created ramdisk. Thus failing to find the rootfs. And as your goal
is only to have a vanilla 2.6.34 kernel to check, why not safe the effort of
finding out what went wrong and burning more compile time.

And the fn+f8 misbehaviour has been seen in other cases. It is usually caused by
Linux claiming to be compatible with any known version of Windows on the ACPI
layer. And recent BIOSes changing behaviour it seems there is a Windows7 running.