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Thursday 21 February 2008

Kernel - User Mode Linux

While I was playing with kernel programming, I managed to hang my linux box. That's why I decided to use again a usermode linux box to do my module programming. First step was to start an linux user box. As specified on the User-mode Linux Kernel Home Page, download the uml linux kernel version as well as the filesystem file which should be used. For this a number of file system are possible, see for example here. In order to build a uml ou need to download the sources of the kernel. You will also need the readline libraries and the fuse libraries. You might also need others. I haven't yet checked that. Once you have these elements ou can compile a unix kernel with usermode support. Then the only remaining things to do were:
host% make defconfig ARCH=um
host% # now make menuconfig or xconfig if desired
host% make menuconfig ARCH=um
host% make ARCH=um

Note the importance of the ARCH=um parametrisation. The menuconfig is useful for further configuration of your kernel.