vmlinuz newbie questions

[Alexandru Juncu]

On Fri, Nov 25, 2011 at 5:22 AM, Jason T. Slack-Moehrle
<slackmoehrle at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello All,
>
> I am trying to understand vmlinuz. From my searching and reading, one can boot a functioning linux kernel by using vmlinuz. I am still a bit fuzzy on some particulars.

The 'vmlinuz' is the binary file that contains the compiled code of
the kernel. You don't use it to boot the kernel because it is the
kernel. The 'z' actually means it is compressed ('vmlinux' is the name
of the compiled kernel, and 'vmlinuz' is the name for a compressed
compiled kernel).

>
> 1. Where does one download and learn about vmlinuz? I find URL to FilesTube, etc but I  dont trust these websites.

The classic way is to download the kernel sources (via kernel.org) and
compile them into this binary. The other way, on distributions sucks
as Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora etc. you can instlall packages (usually
named linux-image-*) that provide the all ready compiled kernel.

>
> 2. Can one boot vmlinuz in a VMWare Virtual machine?

Yes, you can start a linux OS inside your virtual machine.

>
> 3. I run OSX on my laptop, could I use something like MacFuse to mount a vmlinuz parition as drive and slip stream files to it? (not wanting to use SSH or FTP really for what I am playing with)


I don't know what you mean here.

>
> 4. Can I compile vmlinuz from source on my OS X machine?

(Very) theoretically, yes. As long as you have a c compiler, should
work. But I really really would recommend that you instal a full linux
distribution in your virtual machine, and inside that, compile your
kernels.

>
> Some resources and pointers would be greatly appreciated.

Hope it helps.


-- 
Alexandru Juncu

ROSEdu
http://rosedu.org