How to setup hardware for Linux Kernel development (not the obvious way)

Since one needs to use the browser and follow along video tutorials while learning; having to reboot the laptop frequently to install a new kernel makes things difficult. And since I have only one laptop, I was wondering if I could install my development kernel in another device like a Rapberry Pi (https://www.raspberrypi.org/) or similar. I was also wondering if it can be done on an AWS instance (https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/) (or any other cloud providers).
Thanks for your help.
Best Answers
-
I have a Debian-12 as my host machine and Fedora38 inside qemu kvm as my guest. It was fairly easy to set up and works very well for me. I suggest you try something similar to start with and then you can add more VMs inside qemu as needed.
1 -
+1 to qemu for kernel development. You can even set it up to run the kernel with a minimal rootfs and boot in less than a second if you just need a lightweight kernel and nothing else, which also speeds up compilation. vmware, virtualbox and friends are handy if you need a fully-featured distro with additions to share resources with the host. That is also possible with qemu but not that user-friendly, at least at the beginning.
0
Answers
-
@ghanshyam1898 you can use vmware. You can install ubuntu instead inside vmware and do all kinds of things while your host machine is running smoothly, thus allowing you to not restart your whole laptop when tinkering with kernel goes wrong.
0 -
@suab123 said:
@ghanshyam1898 you can use vmware. You can install ubuntu instead inside vmware and do all kinds of things while your host machine is running smoothly, thus allowing you to not restart your whole laptop when tinkering with kernel goes wrong.Thanks for your response. I was wondering if running in vmware will cause any trouble testing the kernel? Like, will the new kernel work a bit differently because of vm?
Also, is there a faster way than vm? How is qemu? And what about electronic boards like raspberry pi etc?
0 -
@ghanshyam1898 not sure about qemu, never used it. Regarding pi, it is arm based machine, and I m certainly sure you are using x86 based system
So I think linux compiled on your host machine wont boot in your pi, or if you want to compile the whole kernel on pi that will be quite slow due to less powerful resources.
0 -
@suab123 said:
@ghanshyam1898 not sure about qemu, never used it. Regarding pi, it is arm based machine, and I m certainly sure you are using x86 based systemSo I think linux compiled on your host machine wont boot in your pi, or if you want to compile the whole kernel on pi that will be quite slow due to less powerful resources.
I was thinking maybe I can compile in my laptop and just run the kernel in Pi. I have seen some youtube videos where developers use different kinds of boards in a similar way. Should be worth a try. Maybe we can collaborate online sometime and give it a shot.
And regarding the arm-x86 thing, we can bring in the default config first from the Pi itself and then compile the kernel so that it's Pi ready.
Thoughts?
0 -
Yup go ahead give it a try and do share the result.
0
Categories
- All Categories
- 51 LFX Mentorship
- 104 LFX Mentorship: Linux Kernel
- 576 Linux Foundation IT Professional Programs
- 304 Cloud Engineer IT Professional Program
- 125 Advanced Cloud Engineer IT Professional Program
- 53 DevOps Engineer IT Professional Program
- 61 Cloud Native Developer IT Professional Program
- 6 Express Training Courses
- 6 Express Courses - Discussion Forum
- 2.1K Training Courses
- 19 LFC110 Class Forum
- 7 LFC131 Class Forum
- 27 LFD102 Class Forum
- 158 LFD103 Class Forum
- 21 LFD121 Class Forum
- 2 LFD137 Class Forum
- 61 LFD201 Class Forum
- 1 LFD210 Class Forum
- LFD210-CN Class Forum
- 1 LFD213 Class Forum - Discontinued
- 128 LFD232 Class Forum
- LFD237 Class Forum
- 23 LFD254 Class Forum
- 613 LFD259 Class Forum
- 105 LFD272 Class Forum
- 1 LFD272-JP クラス フォーラム
- 1 LFD273 Class Forum
- 2 LFS145 Class Forum
- 25 LFS200 Class Forum
- 739 LFS201 Class Forum
- 1 LFS201-JP クラス フォーラム
- 11 LFS203 Class Forum
- 77 LFS207 Class Forum
- 300 LFS211 Class Forum
- 54 LFS216 Class Forum
- 47 LFS241 Class Forum
- 41 LFS242 Class Forum
- 37 LFS243 Class Forum
- 11 LFS244 Class Forum
- 37 LFS250 Class Forum
- 1 LFS250-JP クラス フォーラム
- LFS251 Class Forum
- 141 LFS253 Class Forum
- LFS254 Class Forum
- 1.1K LFS258 Class Forum
- 10 LFS258-JP クラス フォーラム
- 93 LFS260 Class Forum
- 132 LFS261 Class Forum
- 33 LFS262 Class Forum
- 80 LFS263 Class Forum
- 15 LFS264 Class Forum
- 11 LFS266 Class Forum
- 18 LFS267 Class Forum
- 18 LFS268 Class Forum
- 23 LFS269 Class Forum
- 203 LFS272 Class Forum
- 1 LFS272-JP クラス フォーラム
- LFS274 Class Forum
- LFS281 Class Forum
- 236 LFW211 Class Forum
- 172 LFW212 Class Forum
- 7 SKF100 Class Forum
- SKF200 Class Forum
- 903 Hardware
- 219 Drivers
- 74 I/O Devices
- 44 Monitors
- 116 Multimedia
- 209 Networking
- 101 Printers & Scanners
- 85 Storage
- 763 Linux Distributions
- 88 Debian
- 66 Fedora
- 15 Linux Mint
- 13 Mageia
- 24 openSUSE
- 142 Red Hat Enterprise
- 33 Slackware
- 13 SUSE Enterprise
- 357 Ubuntu
- 479 Linux System Administration
- 41 Cloud Computing
- 70 Command Line/Scripting
- Github systems admin projects
- 95 Linux Security
- 78 Network Management
- 108 System Management
- 49 Web Management
- 68 Mobile Computing
- 23 Android
- 30 Development
- 1.2K New to Linux
- 1.1K Getting Started with Linux
- 538 Off Topic
- 131 Introductions
- 217 Small Talk
- 22 Study Material
- 826 Programming and Development
- 278 Kernel Development
- 514 Software Development
- 928 Software
- 260 Applications
- 184 Command Line
- 3 Compiling/Installing
- 76 Games
- 316 Installation
- 61 All In Program
- 61 All In Forum
Upcoming Training
-
August 20, 2018
Kubernetes Administration (LFS458)
-
August 20, 2018
Linux System Administration (LFS301)
-
August 27, 2018
Open Source Virtualization (LFS462)
-
August 27, 2018
Linux Kernel Debugging and Security (LFD440)