Obtaining the Linux Kernel Source
This section shows how to download the Linux kernel source and how to find your way around the kernel source tree to locate files that are of most interest to filesystem development. Later sections show how to configure the kernel to match the hardware on your system, to compile it, and then install the newly built kernel. Both the LILO or GRUB bootloaders are described.
The Linux kernel source can be retrieved from the following Web site:
www.kernel.org
The home page of www.kernel.org shows the latest versions of the kernel. For example, the following line showed the latest stable version at the time of this writing:
The latest stable version of the Linux kernel is: 2.4.18 2002-07-10 00:40 UTC F V VI Changelog
The Web site also describes the state of the different kernels including the latest stable version. Click on the kernel version to download the latest kernel. Clicking on Changelog will display all of the updates to the latest kernel.
All of the kernels since Linux inception can be found at this site. Follow the links through to the source repositories and locate the kernel of your choice. To use the source in the book as is, you need the 2.4.18 kernel. Alternatively, as described earlier, newer versions of the filesystem can be obtained from the following Web site:
www.wiley.com/compbooks/pate
Also at the site is information about which Linux kernels and the various Linux distributions that uxfs supports.
To locate the required kernel ...
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