Creating Linux Kernel Binary

This document provides instructions to create a Linux kernel binary. The kernel binary can be used during a gem5 Full System simulation. We assume the following initial directory structure before following the instructions in this README file:

Linux-kernel/
  |
  |___ linux-configs                           # Folder with Linux kernel configuration files
  |
  |___ README.md                               # This README file

Linux Kernels

We have tested this resource compiling the following five LTS (long term support) releases of the Linux kernel:

  • 4.4.186
  • 4.9.186
  • 4.14.134
  • 4.19.83
  • 5.4.49

To compile the Linux binaries, follow these instructions (assuming that you are in src/Linux-kernel/ directory):

# will create a `linux` directory and download the initial kernel files into it.
git clone https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git

cd linux
# replace version with any of the above listed version numbers
git checkout v[version]

# copy the appropriate Linux kernel configuration file from linux-configs/
cp ../linux-configs/config.[version] .config

make -j`nproc`

After this process succeeds, the compiled Linux binary, named vmlinux, can be found in the src/Linux-kernel/linux. The final structure of the src/Linux-kernel/ directory will look as following:

Linux-kernel/
  |
  |___ linux-configs                           # Folder with Linux kernel configuration files
  |
  |___ linux                                   # Linux source
  |       |
  |       |___ vmlinux                         # The compiled Linux kernel binary
  |
  |___ README.md                               # This README file

Note: The above instructions have been tested using the gcc 7.5.0 compile

The pre-build compiled Linux binaries can be downloaded from the following links:

Licensing: Linux is released under the GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2), but it also contains several files under other compatible licenses. For more information about Linux Kernel Copy Right please refer to here and here.