[ILUG] Patching a kernel

[Richard Eibrand]

Howdy all,

I am currently running the 2.4.10 kernel, and I wanted to patch it all 
the way up to the latest release. I downloaded the required patches and, 
as in 2.4.11-dontuse.. 2.4.12, 2.4.13 and 2.4.14.

I followed the instructions in the kernel source dir for patching, which
said;

    gzip -cd patchXX.gz | patch -p0
    or
    bzip2 -dc patchXX.bz2 | patch -p0
where you replace the x's with the kernel number of the patch.

Now, here are the questions. The patch for 2.4.11 says dont use,
perhaps i am being silly here, but does that mean,

- Do not use the patch at all, or
- Apply the patch, but immediately after wards apply the patch for 
2.4.12...?

The next question, seeing that I like trying things out especially if 
I'm told not to, is this.

I tried to apply the 2.4.11 patch (and the 2.4.12 pacth for that matter),

using gzip -cd patch-2.4.11-dontuse.gz | patch -p0 (and gzip -cd 
patch-2.4.12,gz | ... respectively on a fresh 2.4.10 source dir).

And what I got for both pacthes was (substitute 2.4.12 for 2.4.11 and it 
was the same) ;

 >gzip -cd ../patch-2.4.12.gz | patch -p0
 >can't find file to patch at input line 4
 >Perhaps you used the wrong -p or --strip option?
 >The text leading up to this was:
 >--------------------------
 >|diff -u --recursive --new-file 
 >v2.4.11/linux/Documentation/filesystems/devfs/ChangeLog 
 >linux/Documentation/filesystems/devfs/ChangeLog
 >|--- v2.4.11/linux/Documentation/filesystems/devfs/ChangeLog	Tue Oct  >9 17:06:51 2001
 >|+++ linux/Documentation/filesystems/devfs/ChangeLog	Wed Oct 10 >23:23:24 2001
 >--------------------------
 >File to patch:

What does tha mean?

I have just downloaded the 2.4.14 kernel, but I was curious as to what 
these error meant, and how as how I could remedy in the future, were it 
to happen again.

Thanks for your help,

Richard