Inevitably, after finding an interesting patch file it’s time to actually add it to the Fedora kernel. The kernel team has tried our best to keep the wiki instructions up to date. The build dependencies have changed of late so double check those, especially if you get pesign errors. The instructions for building from Fedora kernel source are still accurate. To summarize from the wiki

  • Make sure you have all dependencies installed. If something fails, double check this again
  • $ fedpkg clone -a kernel
  • $ cd kernel
  • $ git checkout origin/(release) (e.g. origin/f22, origin/f23, origin/master for rawhide)

In the kernel.spec file, it’s good practice to change the line

# define buildid .local

to

%define buildid .local

which will add an extra tag to avoid conflicts with existing kernel packages. You can change the .local to another more descriptive name.

This is now a a pkg-git tree for the Fedora kernel. The wiki page on the kernel.spec file gives an overview about how to add patches. To summarize:

  • copy the .patch file to the pkg-git directory
  • search for END OF PATCH DEFINTIONS
  • Identify the number of the last patch definition. The patch you add will have have number plus 1.
  • Add a line Patch<number +1>: your-patch-name.patch
  • For F22 and earlier, search for END OF PATCH APPLICATION and add ApplyPatch your-patch-name.patch

The tree can now be built with

$ fedpkg local

and installed with

$ dnf install --nogpgcheck ./x86_64/kernel-$version.rpm

(changing the x86_64 to your arch if necessary).

If you aren’t interested in RPMs, the exploded tree has all the patches applied on top. You can use git am to apply other patches and then build the kernel. Sample commands:

  • $ cp fedora/configs/kernel-(version)-(arch).config .config
  • make -j4
  • sudo make modules_install
  • sudo make install