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Just to learn, I want to recompile some OS.

  • I don't want a list of steps to be taken to do it because with that I will not be learning a lot, which would defeat the purpose.
  • I also do not want to be stuck indefinitely since this would be my first such try.

I think any of you Linux gurus would have a fair idea of where I should be starting with. I have some basic Linux experience.

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Your question is too vague. Under Gentoo, you might emerge gentoo-sources, eselect kernel, and then cd /usr/src/linux; make menuconfig; make. – tc. Aug 13 '10 at 19:13
Agreed, this is much too vague. In particular, the term "OS" is vague: Do you just want to recompile a kernel, or an entire bootable system? And you aren't going to learn much by just compiling an OS (as several of the answers here point out, it basically comes down to running make) -- to really learn you'll need to get into the actual source code. – Daniel Pryden Aug 13 '10 at 19:37
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4 Answers

up vote 14 down vote

LFS - Linux From Scratch (LFS) is a project that provides you with step-by-step instructions for building your own custom Linux system, entirely from source code.

Also, most GNU/Linux distros provide tools to compile a kernel their own way.

Reading Modern Operating Systems by Tanenbaum won't hurt either...

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+1 for LFS - as the OP mentions recompiling his OS, I assume what he means is building his own, home-brewed distribution and LFS shows you how to do things like building a gcc compiler for your new system then adding all the bits to it, including but not limited to the Linux Kernel. – Ninefingers Aug 13 '10 at 19:35
+1 I learned a lot about Linux doing this (that I later forgot a good chunk of when getting thrown back into Windows). – Merlyn Morgan-Graham Aug 13 '10 at 19:39
There is also Gentoo stage 1 installation mainly used for development now. – rebus Aug 13 '10 at 19:54
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up vote 3 down vote

There's not much fun in just recompiling a kernel. You invoke some script, magic happens, compile output rolls over your screen, and *ding*, you have a kernel.

In the case of the Linux kernel in particular, something like this:

make menuconfig # shows a menu where you can configure thousands of kernel options
make # do the compiling

It's not very interesting, but that's the place to start. Fiddling with the kernel options, and actually booting into your own, unique, home-baked kernel, that's where the real fun begins.

If you want to learn more about the compilation process itself, study the provided Makefile. In-depth knowledge about GNU make syntax will be helpful.

On the other end of the spectrum, there's doing everything by hand: invoking gcc for each source file, passing in the right compiler options. You would just be replicating the steps that the Makefile is doing for you. That is a nightmare, and not very educational either.

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+1, very true, although in my experience I didn't even get a ding so much as stuff stopped happening. Most undramatic. The resultant kernel didn't even boot, either... – Ninefingers Aug 13 '10 at 19:32
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up vote 0 down vote

Start at http://kernel.org/. I can't pretend to say that I've done it, but that is a good place to start.

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up vote 0 down vote

In OpenBSD, it is documented here: http://openbsd.org/faq/faq5.html

You get a secure operating system thrown in, as well.

Have fun

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