Applying undervolting patches

[Scott J. Henson]

David Abrahams wrote:
> "Scott J. Henson" <scotth at csee.wvu.edu> writes:
> 
>> Ubuntu applies bug fixes and other stability improving
>> patches to its kernel.  This is due to the way linux 2.6
>> development has been proceeding.  
> 
> How has it been proceeding, specifically?

You can check out their git repository.  There are
instructions somewhere in the wiki.  Ive never played with
git, but from what I hear you can get specific patches out.
 But thats probably over kill for you.

>> but you need to weigh that against the loss in stability and ease of
>> use (someone else has mentioned that Ubuntu provides a lot of driver
>> integration).
> 
> "I have not yet begun to compute" on this machine.  So it's a little
> early yet to surrender ;-)
> 
> Anyway, I still have the edgy kernel sources, so I should be able to
> do that build here and apply the undervolting patches to that.

This is one way of doing it.  It has the advantage of
letting you also build all the extra drivers that Ubuntu
provides, but its difficult. The two things that youll run
into are build time and dependencies.  You can try to match
the dapper deps to the edgy kernel, but there will be
versioned deps that will bite you.  Also you can expect it
to take a while to build the edgy kernel.  On my
workstation, which is a dual athlon mp, it can take 5 hours
to build.

You will spend all kinds of time getting the edgy kernel to
build.

> 
>> Now, having said that, it is possible to build a kernel and
>> have it managed by apt and friends.  There exists a package
>> called kernel-package that was built for building kernels
>> into a deb automagically.  
> 
> I believe the HOWTOs I've found are all using it.
> 

If you don't need any of the added drivers that Ubuntu
provides, this is probably the way to go.  You can grab the
latest 2.6.17 kernel (2.6.17.9 I believe) off of kernel.org
and build it with make-kpkg.  It should be very stable and
you shuldn't have much to worry about.  But if you have a
laptop, this could end up being a bad because they tend to
require wireless drivers that aren't in kernel tree.

>> I haven't used it since my old
>> days in Debian and initial forays into Ubuntu, but I would
>> expect it to work still.  I used to follow the bleeding edge
>> on kernels to get the latest and greatest, but Ive grown
>> mundane in my old age and count stability and not having to
>> waste time building kernels over any perceived gain on the
>> bleeding edge.
>>
>> -- 
>> Scott Henson
>> LCSEE Systems Staff
>> WVU MAE Undergraduate
> 
> Ahem.  When you reach true old age, like me, you may find yourself
> getting fussy about how hot your laptop gets, how quietly it can run,
> etc.  I bought this machine because there were too many annoying
> things about a MacBook pro.  I need to make it work better than one of
> those or it will all be for naught.  So even if I don't end up using
> the new kernel much, it's important for me to know now how well it
> *can* work.
> 

Yeah, I was speaking of the heady days of high school when I
had time to build kernels and my computer was more of a toy.
 Now that I have real work, using the stock kernel is what
works best for me.  But you being on a laptop I can
appreciate your need for longer battery life and a cooler
computer.

Also, you might want to file a bug in launchpad to ensure
that edgy is released with this patch applied.

-- 
Scott Henson
LCSEE Systems Staff
WVU MAE Undergraduate
Ubuntu User