Salix Forums

I was just wondering how I should proceed to install a realtime kernel (or compile Salix with the PREEMPT_RT patchset). I've gone and bought myself a synth, and musical input (MIDI and the like) need realtime kernels in order be precise enough for tracking/sequencing.. At least that's what I hear. Besides I find that my ThinkPad T61 is very slow despite its specifications (Core 2 Duo 2.2GHz and 4MB RAM, tried with 7,2K rpm and SSD disks alike). So it could be fun to try.

Ubuntu has -rt and -realtime where the former is based on the Ubuntu source tree and the latter a vanilla source tree (not Ubuntu). But they dumped the former since Natty Narwhal.
There's a kernel patch called CONFIG_PREEMPT_RT which should get the job done.
(Source: http://rt.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Fre ... _Questions)

Is the process similar to Zenwalk's?
http://wiki.zenwalk.org/index.php?title ... l_Manually
Buffer: http://tinyurl.com/3u5xpk2

Currently, I'm on Salix OS 13.37 x86_64 Xfce edition, but I'd be glad to change if that is necessary.

Building a kernel is almost completely the same on any linux system. The Zenwalk instructions seem basically fine, although I'd suggest a few changes.


Create a copy of the /usr/src/linux-* directory, e.g. linux-2.6.37.6-rt, and run make inside that copy. If you want also change the /usr/src/linux symlink to point at that directory. If it's going to be your main kernel a good idea.

Don't edit the Makefile instead use the CONFIG_LOCALVERSION option.

Use make -jX, where x can be significantly higher than the number of cores if you don't want to use your machine while building the kernel. Otherwise choose a low value (number of cores).

Use the make && make modules_install instructions (good idea to copy .config also) and edit your lilo.conf afterwards and run lilo -v. If you're using grub2 you have a much more relaxed life usually and can just run update-grub.

Maybe I'll create likewise instructions for Salix, I feel like building a kernel atm.

I agree with Shador. Just few things to add:
1. It's a good idea to import the original Slackware kernel config. It's available in /boot or if the kernel is running you can do: 2. If you are using a newer kernel version than the Salix/Slackware one you want to run make oldconfig afterwards and answer some question on new kernel options.

3. Use a patch from http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/projects/rt/ fitting for your kernel version and run make menuconfig to enable the RT options.