# How do I stay at 2.4 kernel? (What dependencies?)

## willdev

All,

PROBLEM:

I want to stay at the 2.4.x kernel.  With Gentoo moving the kernel sources to be in-line with the rest of portage and with the move to the /etc/make.profile symlink, this presents a problem for me in terms of understanding how to correctly set-up the system to stay at a 2.4.28 kernel.

SITUATION:

Some of the software I run, is dependent on having a 2.4.x kernel.  Therefore for my day-to-day work, I need to be running a 2.4.x kernel.

QUESTIONS:

I installed gentoo using the 1.4 boot cds.  This was 2 years ago.  I have been running with the ~x86 ACCEPT_KEYWORD.  As you can imagine I have had some difficult issues arising from this.  I want to start running with the x86 keyword.

1.) What are the critical system packages and what versions do they need to be, given that I want to stay at the 2.4.x kernel?

For instance bin-utils, gcc, glibc, linux-headers.  I think this is the 'toolchain' and there are many posts on scripts and the correct way to build these packages, ie, build then build again so they are built with the latest versions of each.

I am confused as to the dependencies between linux-headers and glibc and gcc.

2.) Once I have identified the versions that I need to have, how do I tell gentoo to only use the these identified versions?

Once this has been done, I feel like I should move to the x86 keyword and only unmask testing packages individually.

3.) How do I move to the x86 keyword from ~x86?

An emerge -Duve world at this point, i think would bork the system..........

I have read posts in the past to try and accomplish these tasks, but always seem to end up with a really whacked system.  Because each post was only addressing a small part of what I need to do, the forest got lost for the trees.

Kindest regards,

John

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## nagini

I agree, I think that you are not the only one who has machines that will want to have the option of staying with a 2.4 kernel. Some illumination on this from the developers would be nice.

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## phsdv

I am also still at 2.4 because of some very specific software/hardware thats needs it. To do so I installed from a 2004.3 live cd and later I switched to 2005.0/2.4 by linking the /etc/make.profile to this profile which is definitely has 2.4 kernel.

Here is what I did, it migt not be the best way to do it, but it worked for me:

before I change the link of to 2005.0/2.4 i first did

```
emerge --sync

emerge --update --deep world

```

follwed by

```
rm /etc/make.profile

ln -s /usr/portage/profiles/default-linux/x86/2005.0/2.4 /etc/make.profile

emerge --sync

```

to verify if every thing was OK I did an other update:

```
emerge --pretend --update --deep world
```

which showed that I had to reinstall the 2.4 kernel headers, which I did. 

warning, paths might be not correct, I am not on my geentoo box to verify it. EDIT: corrected path in ln -s statement

To anser your other questions: 

1) and 2) I can not tell you which versions you have to use, there portage takes care of this.

3) I do not knowLast edited by phsdv on Wed Mar 30, 2005 7:14 pm; edited 1 time in total

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## nagini

Have to give that a try.

Question - it seems that you let emerge upgrade everything to the 2005.0 2.6 default before you went and switched the profile to the 2.4 version. Is this true?

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## phsdv

 *Quote:*   

>  it seems that you let emerge upgrade everything to the 2005.0 2.6 default before you went and switched the profile to the 2.4 version

 

I guess that is true, although the 2.6 kernel was not used by me. If there is a better way to do this I would like to know.

The problem was, that I had some problems getting there. After linking to 2005.0/2.4 I could not do a world update. I was getting errors about dependencies. Maybe the folowing would work:

```
rm /etc/make.profile

ln -s  /usr/portage/profiles/default-linux/x86/2005.0/2.4 /etc/make.profile

emerge --sync

emerge --update --deep world 

```

Can somebody tell us if the emerge sync is needed? Or would emerge --metadata or something be enough?

Paul

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## nagini

Okay, I changed to the 2005.0/2.4 profile. I then sync'd and looked at what would be updated and it still wants to upgrade my kernel and headers to 2.6. I don't care about the kernel because I do not have to use it but the headers are a potential problem. 

After you re-emerged the headers does a subsequent emerge world want to bring in the 2.6 headers again?

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## phsdv

 *Quote:*   

> After you re-emerged the headers does a subsequent emerge world want to bring in the 2.6 headers again?

 

No, it only wanted te remerge the 2.4 headers again.

Are you sure you linked to the 2.4 sub directory? what does

```
 ls -l /etc/make.profile
```

 show?

----------

## nagini

Never mind...

I forgot to link the profile properly... :Embarassed: 

With the profile linked as

```
ln -sf /usr/portage/profiles/default-linux/x86/2005.0/2.4 /etc/make/profile

```

This gets rid of the update to the 2.6 kernels and headers

Yea!

----------

