README

WARNING: The netkit-NG project is deprecated in favoir of Netkit-JH

==============================================================================
                              NETKIT USER MODE KERNEL
                                   Version K2.8
==============================================================================

This package provides a User Mode Linux (UML) kernel for use with Netkit
virtual machines.


=== ABOUT THIS KERNEL ===

A User Mode kernel is a particular piece of software that emulates the kernel
of a real host, and yet runs as a standard user space process, namely as a
standard application like `xterm'. Emulated features include virtual disks,
network interfaces, memory management, scheduling algorithms, and (almost)
whatever the kernel of a host machine would provide.

This kernel has been configured to enable support for loadable kernel modules,
namely drivers and other components that can be attached or removed on the fly
from a running kernel. Using modules reduces the overall kernel size, because
most features are compiled as separate modules, and minimizes memory
consumption and startup time, because unnecessary drivers and features are not
enabled until explicitly required.
Compiled modules are provided inside the directory
`modules/lib/modules/<kernel_version>', where <kernel_version> is the version
of the kernel provided with this package.

Every virtual machine can be started with its own UML kernel. In principle,
nothing forces to use particular combinations of kernels and filesystems.
Nevertheless, filesystems may contain tools that have been installed for use
with a specific kernel version. It is therefore advised to always use the most
recent released kernels and filesystems.


=== COMPILING A CUSTOM UML KERNEL FOR USE WITH NETKIT ===

This section describes how to compile an UML kernel from scratch so that it can
be used with Netkit.

In principle, the procedure to compile a kernel is independent on the
underlying Linux distribution. However, some of these instructions are tailored
for our development platform, which is a Debian system.


1. PREREQUISITES

First of all, you need to have a properly set up building environment.
Typically, this involves installing at the very least the following packages:
   gcc
   binutils
   make
   libc6-dev
   bison
   flex

You are likely going to compile a cross-architecture kernel. This is the case,
for example, when you are building the kernel on a x86_64 (64 bit) platform and
want it to be compatible with other i386 (32 bit) hosts. In this case, you
would need other packages:
   libc6-dev-i386
   gcc-multilib

Yet other packages will be needed to enable specific kernel features and
modules, but these highly depend on which of them you choose to enable. The
rule of thumb is to check for missing files in compilation errors and install
development packages (their names typically end with `-dev') that provide those
files. For a Debian system you can perform a search for packages that contain a
given file by visiting the URL http://packages.debian.org/file:<path>, where
<path> is the name of the file.

Cross-compilation may require further actions. For example, some development
packages contain files that are specific for a certain architecture (say
x86_64), and your target architecture may be different (say i386). In this
case, installing system-wide development files is not enough because the
compiler will not find the files that are required for the target architecture.
In principle, this could be solved by forcedly installing a package for an
architecture that is different from your host's, but this is a bad idea as one
day it may break the operation of other tools on your system. We therefore
provide an `include' directory inside the kernel directory, where you can put
all the offending packages without harming your system. The makefile we provide
should take care of automatically get the required packages. However, if you
still wanted to do it manually, you would proceed as follows:
   cd $NETKIT_HOME/kernel/include
   dpkg-deb -x <debian_package> $PWD
where <debian_package> is the name of a package that has been manually
downloaded in advance.  We are aware of at least the following packages causing
this kind of problem:
   libpcap-dev
   libvdeplug2-dev
Remember that some packages are only metapackages, meaning that they only exist
to ensure dependence on other packages. As such, they do not contain any files
and are not suited to obtain the required development libraries and files.


2. COMPILATION (THE AUTOMATIC WAY)

Starting from version K2.6, the kernel package comes with a makefile that helps
automating the configuration and compilation process. Consider that the
makefile has been conceived for use on a Debian system, and may therefore not
operate properly on other distributions.

If you are going to use the makefile, all you need to do is to enter the kernel
directory and invoke make as follows:
   cd $NETKIT_HOME/kernel
   make -f Makefile.devel kernel

The makefile automatically takes care of performing all the operations detailed
in section COMPILATION (THE MANUAL WAY). You know that the kernel was
successfully compiled when the makefile exits without errors and a kernel
executable (typically `netkit-kernel' or similar) is created.

The makefile may also provide other targets (for example, to automatically build
a Netkit kernel package) and supports the specification of some options to tune
the build process. If you want to know all of them, you can simply type:
   cd $NETKIT_HOME/kernel
   make -f Makefile.devel


3. COMPILATION (THE MANUAL WAY)

Compiling a kernel requires performing the following steps.

First of all, you need to get a vanilla kernel source tarball. Such files are
available at http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/. Get a kernel version
that matches the one provided in the Netkit kernel package, or you may
experience compilation faults due to incompatible configurations. Place the
kernel package inside `$NETKIT_HOME/kernel' and unpack it by using the
following command:
   tar xjf linux-<kernel_version>.tar.bz2
or, if you got a .tar.gz package:
   tar xzf linux-<kernel_version>.tar.gz

Now you need to apply Netkit-specific patches, which can be found in
`$NETKIT_HOME/kernel/patches'. A shortcut to apply all of them at once follows:
   cd $NETKIT_HOME/kernel/linux-<kernel_version>
   for CURRENT_PATCH in $NETKIT_HOME/kernel/patches/*.diff; do \
      patch -p1 < $CURRENT_PATCH; done
If you downloaded the correct kernel version, no unrecoverable failures should
be reported by this command.

At this point you are ready to configure the kernel. We strongly suggest to use
the configuration settings provided with Netkit as a starting point. In order
to do so, you need to copy the configuration file that applies for your target
architecture. For example, if you want to compile a kernel for i386 (32 bit)
hosts, you would use the command:
   cp $NETKIT_HOME/kernel/netkit-kernel-config-i386 \
      $NETKIT_HOME/kernel/linux-<kernel_version>/.config
Then, you need to instruct the kernel build files to fetch this configuration:
   cd $NETKIT_HOME/kernel/linux-<kernel_version>
   make silentoldconfig ARCH=um SUBARCH=<target_architecture>
If you downloaded the correct kernel version, this command should complete
automatically and ask no questions. Otherwise, the user is prompted for any
configuration settings that mismatch against those provided with the Netkit
kernel package.
If you needed to alter settings (for example to enable other drivers or
features), you would run the following command:
   make menuconfig ARCH=um SUBARCH=<target_architecture>
and save the configuration on exit.

At this point you are ready to start the compilation. In order to do so,
proceed as follows:
   cd $NETKIT_HOME/kernel/linux-<kernel_version>
   make all modules modules_install ARCH=um SUBARCH=<target_architecture> \
      INSTALL_MOD_PATH=$NETKIT_HOME/kernel/modules \
      CFLAGS+=-I$NETKIT_HOME/kernel/include/usr/include \
      LDFLAGS+=-L$NETKIT_HOME/kernel/include/usr/lib
If the procedure completes successfully, your UML kernel should be available in
the form of an executable file named `linux' inside the kernel sources
directory.