Subject: Re: [vserver] Debian Support
From: "Michael S. Zick" <mszick@morethan.org>
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 2009 09:06:31 -0500

On Wed September 30 2009, Eugen Leitl wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 03:17:05PM +0200, Laurent Spagnol wrote:
> 
> > In fact, we don't have to run after the latest kernel releases, and in 
> > most of the cases the security holes comes from userland applications ...
> > 
> > So:
> > - i build my own kernels (IPv6, 'pseudo' loopback,  and some new 
> > features that are usefull for me),
> > - i take stability and updates from Debian,
> > - and i continue to use my favorite distribution ;)
> 
> Do you have this SOP documented somewhere? I'm afraid I have
> to do it myself (currently using stock Debian vserver kernels
> and stock vserver-utils, which kinda, sorta work, but do suck)
> in future.
> 

The kernel build system has a deb-pkg make target.

The result will be a 'generic' debian kernel package, installable by dpkg -i ...

Now, the fun part - -
Where I quoted 'generic' above, I mean without the initial ramFS (a.k.a: initrd)
creation.
The kernel package is the same across the systems using the *.deb packaging -
The creation, scripting included and use at boot time of the initrd varies -
both by distribution and by local options.

But I presume that the end-user has the update-initramfs set of script tools installed.
All of the *.deb based distributions have such an animal, although perhaps with a name
change.

So installing the kernel from the package made by the deb-pkg target is a two step process:
1) dpkg -i <package name here>
2) update-initramfs -c -k <kernel version name here> (this is the same name found under
/lib/modules)

It is step 2 that builds the initrd with the distribution specific included scripting
and the user's local options.

Although not a Linux-VServer patched kernel, here is a worked example of the end-user
directions:
http://forum.netbookuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=907

Mike