395. Compiling the ck-kernel 3.8.x on debian (and patching i915)

What is the ck kernel? In short it is a patch for the mainline kernel which is supposed to render it more responsive for desktop use. See here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Linux-ck

I'm not going to try to 'benchmark' this against the stock kernel, since I'm not clear what a good metric would be -- how do you measure 'responsiveness'? Come to think of it -- what's a good, objective definition?

Download the kernel version that you need from http://kernel.org and the ck path from Con's web page at http://users.on.net/~ckolivas/kernel/

I also ended up applying this patch to sort out recent i915 issues:
http://verahill.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/368-slow-mouse-and-keyboard-triggered.html
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1248190
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-7278760.html
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1254285#p1254285

I did it by creating a file called i915.patch and placing it in the kernel source root:

--- drivers/gpu/drm/drm_crtc_helper.c   2013-04-26 10:24:07.987942008 +1000
+++ ../../linux-3.8.8/drivers/gpu/drm/drm_crtc_helper.c 2013-04-17 15:11:28.000000000 +1000
@@ -1067,7 +1067,7 @@ void drm_helper_hpd_irq_event(struct drm
        enum drm_connector_status old_status;
        bool changed = false;
 
-       if (!dev->mode_config.poll_enabled || !drm_kms_helper_poll)
+       if (!dev->mode_config.poll_enabled)
                return;
 
        mutex_lock(&dev->mode_config.mutex);

Note that as far as I know it doesn't solve the issue, but it does allow you to disable polling by editing /etc/default/grub and adding

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet drm_kms_helper.poll=N"

followed by running

sudo update-grub

So far it's working fine (after testing for ca one hour).

Anyway, here's kernel 3.8.5 (should work on all 3.8.x):

sudo apt-get install kernel-package fakeroot build-essential ncurses-dev
mkdir ~/tmp
cd ~/tmp
wget https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.x/linux-3.8.5.tar.xz
tar xvf linux-3.8.5.tar.xz
cd linux-3.8.5/
wget http://ck.kolivas.org/patches/3.0/3.8/3.8-ck1/patch-3.8-ck1.bz2
bunzip2 patch-3.8-ck1.bz2
patch -p1 < patch-3.8-ck1

patching file arch/powerpc/platforms/cell/spufs/sched.c
patching file Documentation/scheduler/sched-BFS.txt
patching file Documentation/sysctl/kernel.txt
patching file fs/proc/base.c
patching file include/linux/init_task.h
patching file include/linux/ioprio.h
patching file include/linux/sched.h
patching file init/Kconfig
patching file init/main.c
patching file kernel/delayacct.c
patching file kernel/exit.c
patching file kernel/posix-cpu-timers.c
patching file kernel/sysctl.c
patching file lib/Kconfig.debug
patching file include/linux/jiffies.h
patching file drivers/cpufreq/cpufreq.c
patching file drivers/cpufreq/cpufreq_ondemand.c
patching file drivers/cpufreq/cpufreq_conservative.c
patching file kernel/sched/bfs.c
patching file kernel/sched/Makefile
patching file include/uapi/linux/sched.h
patching file include/linux/swap.h
patching file mm/memory.c
patching file mm/swapfile.c
patching file mm/vmscan.c
patching file arch/x86/Kconfig
patching file kernel/Kconfig.hz
patching file kernel/Kconfig.preempt
patching file Makefile

patch -p0 -R < i915.patch

patching file drivers/gpu/drm/drm_crtc_helper.c
make-kpgk clean
cat /boot/config-`uname -r`>.config
make oldconfig
time fakeroot make-kpkg -j4 --initrd kernel_image kernel_headers
sudo dpkg -i ../linux*3.8.5-ck*.deb

where 4 is the number of cores on your machine (note: it only has to do with compiling -- you can use the compiled binaries on any number of cores).

That's it. Now all you have to do is reboot and you'll be using your new kernel. Simple, eh?