RedHat-Athena 4.0.0 is based on RedHat Linux release 4.0, the fourth major release of the RedHat Linux distribution. This distribution is based on version 2.0.18 of the Linux kernel. (A kernel is the heart of an operating system, providing basic functionality used by other components. A distribution includes a kernel and the rest of the software forming the operating system.) The latest kernel version that works with Linux-AFS is 2.0.29; although version 2.0.18 also works fine, you might want toconsider upgrading anyway because version 2.0.29 fixes some problems present in version 2.0.18. Version 2.1.n kernels will not be supported; these kernels are experimental and unsupported by SIPB.
If the kernel you are using does everything you need it to do, you should be able to keep using it. However, you might want to install another kernel, either because you want to use hardware (a sound card, for instance) not supported by the kernel you currently have installed or because you would like to upgrade to a newer supported kernel.
Linux-AFS is very dependent on kernel versions, so if you upgrade your kernel you will also probably need to upgrade Linux-AFS. See /mit/linux/packages/Linux-AFS/README for more details. If you upgrade to a version 2.0.n kernel from a 1.m.n kernel, you will have to make a lot of other changes; see /mit/linux/kernel/linux-2.0/Changes for more details. If you are using RedHat Linux 3.0 or older and want to use a 2.0.n kernel, it is probably easiest just to upgrade to RedHat-Athena 4.0.
To actually build a kernel, you should first ensure that the version
you want to install is in /usr/src/linux. If it isn't, you can
obtain a kernel from /mit/linux/afskern; all the kernels in this
directory are stable and should work with AFS. Before you can compile
a kernel, you must first unpack it by running the following commands
as root:
cd /usr/src
where version is the version you want to build.
zcat /mit/linux/afskern/linux-version.tar.gz | tar xvf -
To build the new kernel, you can now run the following commands as
root:
cd /usr/src/linux
After you run these commands, your new kernel will be the file
/usr/src/linux/arch/i386/boot/zImage. You can test this kernel by
putting it on a floppy: put a blank disk in the drive which DOS would
call A: and type (as root)
make config
make dep
make zImage
cd /usr/src/linux
If the new kernel works, you can install it with the commands
make zdisk
cd /usr/src/linux
make install
If you are building a version 2.0 or newer kernel, you can run make xconfig or make menuconfig instead of make config if you want a friendlier interface. When configuring the kernel, be sure to enable module support and to ``set version information on all symbols for modules''; otherwise, Linux-AFS will not run. If you have configured any drivers as modules, you will have to add some steps to the above process; type make modules after compiling the kernel, and make modules_install after installing it. More information on building kernels is available in /mit/linux/docs/HOWTO/Kernel-HOWTO.