another stupid question

[DataZap]

Hi,

I found a site that has a NetBSD 4 release binaries that have been
compiled with processor optimization and although I could do this myself,
this will save me alot of time. Where I have a problem is that I need to
build a custom kernel and I don't think that a generic kernel will work. I
should be able to download the source, but now that I went to
ftp.netbsd.org. I found NetBSD-4.0 and NetBSD-release-4-0. So, when I went
to the website and did a search, I found that NetBSD release was done on
Dec. 17. I thought that would help me determine which one to use, but
NetBSD-4.0 directories have a date of Dec. 16 and NetBSD-release-4-0 has
much newer dates. I was going to use the source from the NetBSD-4.0
directory. I might be missing the obvious, but do I need the exact same
source from the exact same date to build a proper custom kernel for the
userland that I downloaded?

Thanks,
Al

[Greg Troxel]

GENERIC is more likely to be ok with 4.0 than it was with say 1.6, so
I'd advise at least trying it.

I'm not sure about the sources. What I'd do is pull from anonymous cvs
with one of the following tags (e.g., use "-r netbsd-4" on your checkout):

netbsd-4-0-RELEASE the release, exactly
netbsd-4-0 security fix branch for 4.0
netbsd-4 stable branch for 4 (4.1 will be from this some day)

It's perfectly ok to have a slightly newer kernel from the netbsd-4 or
netbsd-4-0 branches than your userland. The branch rules are more or
less bug and security fixes only, no structural changes, no ABI/API
changes.

I use tags like netbsd-4 on production machines, and update both
userland and kernel from source. (While technically it's required to
have a newer kernel than user, I find that along a stable branch I can
install both and reboot with no trouble. When jumping branches I always
install the kernel and reboot and then install userland.)

So I would suggest that you build a kernel from the netbsd-4 branch.