On Fri, Nov 25, 2011 at 5:22 AM, Jason T. Slack-Moehrle <slackmoehrle@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