160. Compiling kernel 3.4 on debian

The steps are the usual ones. At this point compiling your kernel is perhaps more of a hobby than a necessity to most people, unless you happen to have some fancy piece of hardware that's about to become supported.

It's not difficult, so there's no reason not to give it a spin.

UPDATE 9/7: Works fine with 3.4.4 as well (as it should). Compile time with -j7 on AMD X6 1055 is

real 33m27.472s
user 84m7.295s
sys 15m58.668s

which is underwhelming.


-- Start Here --
sudo apt-get install kernel-package fakeroot build-essential

mkdir ~/tmp
cd ~/tmp
wget http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.0/linux-3.4.tar.bz2
tar xvf linux-3.4.tar.bz2
cd linux-3.4/
cat /boot/config-`uname -r`>.config
make oldconfig

If your current kernel is 3.3.5 the questions that await are given at the bottom of this post with links to descriptions of the different options. As usual, if in doubt, just hit enter.

make-kpkg clean

Building takes ages (depending on number of cores committed), so don't launch it at 4 pm on a Friday if you need to shut down your computer before going home... As usual, use the -jX switch for parallel builds, where X is the number of cores+1 (i.e. 4 cores => -j5)

The following command goes on a single line
time fakeroot make-kpkg -j5 --initrd --revision=3.4.0 --append-to-version=-amd64 kernel_image kernel_headers

Once the build is done, move the .deb files out of the way and to your linux-3.4 directory for safe-keeping
 mv ../*3.4.0*.deb .
sudo dpkg -i *.deb

Done.

The image weighs in at about 33 Mb and the headers at 7.6 Mb
And compile time with 4 out of 6 cores?  Well, not too bad:

real    34m51.027s
user    73m35.644s
sys     15m9.169s

---

Questions:
Boottime Graphics Resource Table support (ACPI_BGRT) [N/m/y/?] (NEW)
      Default ASPM policy
      > 1. BIOS default (PCIEASPM_DEFAULT) (NEW)
        2. Powersave (PCIEASPM_POWERSAVE) (NEW)
        3. Performance (PCIEASPM_PERFORMANCE) (NEW)
      choice[1-3]: 1
Enable PCI resource re-allocation detection (PCI_REALLOC_ENABLE_AUTO) [N/y/?] (NEW)
x32 ABI for 64-bit mode (EXPERIMENTAL) (X86_X32) [N/y/?] (NEW) See also cateee
Connection tracking timeout (NF_CONNTRACK_TIMEOUT) [N/y/?] (NEW)
Connection tracking timeout tuning via Netlink (NF_CT_NETLINK_TIMEOUT) [N/m/?] (NEW)
LOG target support (NETFILTER_XT_TARGET_LOG) [N/m/?] (NEW) M
Plug network traffic until release (PLUG) (NET_SCH_PLUG) [N/m/y/?] (NEW)
PEAK PCAN-PC Card (CAN_PEAK_PCMCIA) [N/m/?] (NEW)
 PEAK PCAN-ExpressCard Cards (CAN_PEAK_PCIEC) [Y/n/?] (NEW)
PEAK PCAN-USB/USB Pro interfaces (CAN_PEAK_USB) [N/m/?] (NEW)
 Support for DiskOnChip G4 (EXPERIMENTAL) (MTD_NAND_DOCG4) [N/m/?] (NEW)
Universal Flash Storage host controller driver (SCSI_UFSHCD) [N/m/?] (NEW)
virtio-scsi support (EXPERIMENTAL) (SCSI_VIRTIO) [N/m/?] (NEW)
 Verity target support (EXPERIMENTAL) (DM_VERITY) [N/m/?] (NEW)
Solarflare SFC9000-family hwmon support (SFC_MCDI_MON) [Y/n/?] (NEW)
Solarflare SFC9000-family SR-IOV support (SFC_SRIOV) [Y/n/?] (NEW)
 Drivers for the AMD PHYs (AMD_PHY) [N/m/?] (NEW)

QMI WWAN driver for Qualcomm MSM based 3G and LTE modems (USB_NET_QMI_WWAN) [N/m/?] (NEW)

support MFP (802.11w) even if uCode doesn't advertise (IWLWIFI_EXPERIMENTAL_MFP) [N/y/?] (NEW)

Additional debugging output (RTLWIFI_DEBUG) [Y/n] (NEW)

TI OMAP4 keypad support (KEYBOARD_OMAP4) [N/m/y/?] (NEW)

Synaptics USB device support (MOUSE_SYNAPTICS_USB) [N/m/y/?] (NEW)

Cypress TTSP touchscreen (TOUCHSCREEN_CYTTSP_CORE) [N/m/y/?] (NEW) 

Ilitek ILI210X based touchscreen (TOUCHSCREEN_ILI210X) [N/m/?] (NEW)

Xen Hypervisor Multiple Consoles support (HVC_XEN_FRONTEND) [Y/n/?] (NEW)

HSI support (HSI) [N/m/y/?] (NEW)

Intel PCH EG20T as PTP clock (PTP_1588_CLOCK_PCH) [N/m/?] (NEW) 

Dallas 2781 battery monitor chip (W1_SLAVE_DS2781) [N/m/?] (NEW) 

 2781 battery driver (BATTERY_DS2781) [N/m/?] (NEW)

Summit Microelectronics SMB347 Battery Charger (CHARGER_SMB347) [N/m/?] (NEW) 

Microchip MCP3021 (SENSORS_MCP3021) [N/m/?] (NEW) 

TPS65217 Power Management / White LED chips (MFD_TPS65217) [N/m/?] (NEW)

  TI TPS62360 Power Regulator (REGULATOR_TPS62360) [N/m/?] (NEW) 

  GPIO IR remote control (IR_GPIO_CIR) [N/m/?] (NEW) 

 Keene FM Transmitter USB support (USB_KEENE) [N/m/?] (NEW)

AzureWave 6007 and clones DVB-T/C USB2.0 support (DVB_USB_AZ6007) [N/m/?] (NEW) 

Realtek RTL28xxU DVB USB support (DVB_USB_RTL28XXU) [N/m/?] (NEW)

Allow to specify an EDID data set instead of probing for it (DRM_LOAD_EDID_FIRMWARE) [N/y/?] (NEW)

  DisplayLink (DRM_UDL) [N/m/?] (NEW)

Intel740 support (EXPERIMENTAL) (FB_I740) [N/m/y/?] (NEW) 

Exynos Video driver support (EXYNOS_VIDEO) [N/y/?] (NEW)

Backlight driver for TI LP855X (BACKLIGHT_LP855X) [N/m/?] (NEW)

Saitek non-fully HID-compliant devices (HID_SAITEK) [N/m/?] (NEW)

TiVo Slide Bluetooth remote control support (HID_TIVO) [N/m/?] (NEW)

 Generic OHCI driver for a platform device (USB_OHCI_HCD_PLATFORM) [N/y/?] (NEW) 

Generic EHCI driver for a platform device (USB_EHCI_HCD_PLATFORM) [N/y/?] (NEW)

USB Fintek F81232 Single Port Serial Driver (USB_SERIAL_F81232) [N/m/?] (NEW) 

USB Metrologic Instruments USB-POS Barcode Scanner Driver (USB_SERIAL_METRO) [N/m/?] (NEW)

 LED support for PCA9633 I2C chip (LEDS_PCA9633) [N/m/?] (NEW)

Xen ACPI processor (XEN_ACPI_PROCESSOR) [M/n/?] (NEW) 

Memory allocator for compressed pages (ZSMALLOC) [M/y/?] (NEW) 

 Intel Management Engine Interface (Intel MEI) (INTEL_MEI) [N/m/y/?] (NEW) 

USB over WiFi Host Controller (USB_WPAN_HCD) [N/m/?] (NEW) 

Apple Gmux Driver (APPLE_GMUX) [N/m/y/?] (NEW) 

QNX6 file system support (read only) (QNX6FS_FS) [N/m/y/?] (NEW) 

 NFSv4.1 Implementation ID Domain (NFS_V4_1_IMPLEMENTATION_ID_DOMAIN) [kernel.org] (NEW) 

RPC: Enable dprintk debugging (SUNRPC_DEBUG) [N/y/?] (NEW) 

Print additional diagnostics on RCU CPU stall (RCU_CPU_STALL_INFO) [N/y/?] (NEW)

Yama support (SECURITY_YAMA) [N/y/?] (NEW)

Camellia cipher algorithm (x86_64) (CRYPTO_CAMELLIA_X86_64) [N/m/y/?] (NEW)

CRC32 perform self test on init (CRC32_SELFTEST) [N/y/?] (NEW) 

 CRC32 implementation

  > 1. Slice by 8 bytes (CRC32_SLICEBY8) (NEW)

    2. Slice by 4 bytes (CRC32_SLICEBY4) (NEW)

    3. Sarwate's Algorithm (one byte at a time) (CRC32_SARWATE) (NEW)

    4. Classic Algorithm (one bit at a time) (CRC32_BIT) (NEW)

  choice[1-4?]: 

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Links to this post:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/147725/ubuntu-12-04-fail-to-upgrade-to-kernel-3-4
http://www.deltageek.fr/installer-un-nouveau-noyau-linux/
http://thinkpad-forum.de/threads/141365-Linux-Probleme-mit-neuen-Modellen-(W-L-X-Tx30)/page2
http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=24814