Kernel Configuration – Finding Kernel Configuration on Linux Distributions

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I'm pretty sure that all Red Hat and Debian based distributions follow the convention of shipping the kernel configuration in /boot/config-*, but what of other distributions? Or, if this convention is extremely common, which distributions don't follow it?

Best Answer

Debian and derivatives (Ubuntu, Linux Mint, …)

The configuration for the kernel /boot/vmlinuz-VERSION is stored in /boot/config-VERSION. The two files ship in the same package, linux-VERSION or kernel-VERSION.

Arch Linux, Gentoo (if enabled)

The configuration for the running kernel is stored in the kernel binary and can be retrieved with zcat /proc/config.gz.

This file exists when the CONFIG_IKCONFIG option is set when compiling the kernel - and so can be true (or not) regardless of distribution, though the default kernel configuration for the two named does enable it.

Incidentally, arch linux's default configuration does not name the kernel (or its initramfs image) by version even in /boot - the files there are named only for their corresponding packages. For example, a typical arch linux boot kernel is named /boot/vmlinuz-linux where linux is the package one installs for the default kernel.

Related Solutions

Linux – Compare two kernel config files from the menuconfig perspective

Try using scripts/diffconfig from the Linux kernel source tree.

Usage:

diffconfig config-a config-b

Shows a list of lines removed, modified and added to the config-b file with respect to config-a.

Linux – Safely changing Linux kernel config programmatically

What I do is first:

make defconfig

Then append settings changes to .config followed by:

make olddefconfig

This should "fix up" any inconsistencies introduced in the configuration. YMMV since it may not fix them in the way you expect.