Gro-Tsen

Another followup to say that `/usr/share/doc/linux-image-legacy-rk35xx/changelog.gz` gives my kernel version as: 5.10.160-S5279-D6ad0-P0000-C42aaHfe66-HK01ba-Vc222-Bc698-R448a So I guess my question is what these numbers mean and how I can use them to reconstruct the exact kernel tree (or at least check that I have the right kernel tree). None of them seems to be a Git commit number, so I don't know what they are.

Just a followup to make my question perhaps clearer: The ideal form answer for me would be something like this: “to reconstruct the 5.10.160-legacy-rk35xx kernel for Armbian 23.8.2 Bookworm on nanopi-r6s, check out branch `rk-5.10-rkr6` of https://github.com/armbian/linux-rockchip and run `make deb-pkg` in this tree: then just install the resulting .deb files to install the new kernel”. This can't be quite right, though, because this doesn't tell me where the config file comes from, and I suspect a little bit more than `make deb-pkg` is needed. But this is the sort of answer I'm looking for.

I got Armbian 23.8.2 Bookworm with Linux 5.10.160-legacy-rk35xx successfully running on a couple of NanoPi R6S boxes. So far so good. Now I would like to use Wifi dongles (USB sticks) that I have on these machines. They use the `ath9k_htc` kernel driver. I have used this successfully on ARM-based machines earlier. However, Armbian does not provide this module. So I need to compile it myself (either obtain the exact sources that were used in the kernel I'm currently running, so I can recompile this single module or, perhaps more realistically, start a custom tree with the Armbian patches and config, from which I can rebuild on my own). I'm familiar with Linux kernel compilation from the mainline kernel sources (and cross-compilation is no issue here since I can run the compilation on the ARM box itself), but not the way Armbian does it. So my question is: how do I obtain a copy of the sources (and config file!) that were used to compile the precise kernel that I installed? I read on https://docs.armbian.com/Developer-Guide_Build-Preparation/ that one can regenerate the Armbian kernel by cloning https://github.com/armbian/build and then running something like this: ./compile.sh BRANCH=legacy BOARD=nanopi-r6s kernel However there are a number of issues with this: first it requires root access which is something making me quite uneasy¹ (I just want to recompile a kernel), second it proceeds to the full build without letting me stop to examine the config, review the patches; third, I'm not even sure the parameters I passed are the exact right ones to recreate the kernel that's currently running on my system. So, question: how can I produce an Armbian kernel tree for 5.10.160-legacy-rk35xx for the nanopi-r6s board with the patches and config that are running on my system, and then pause so I tweak the config and do whatever I feel necessary before starting the compilation? And if possible, in a way that does not require root access. Many thanks in advance! Footnote: 1. Just to be clear, my uneasiness is not about security issues per se (I'm running Armbian anyway, so of course I have to trust the Armbian devs), but once something starts running as root, there's no telling what it modifies where. For example, I just discovered it had written lots of junk in /root/.cache which has very little storage place, and I'd like to avoid this sort of problems.