Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Distribution specific features
Some Linux distributions may assume the presence of features which are not en-
abled or supported in the Raspberry Pi Foundation prebuilt kernel images. Exam-
ples include SELinux, some extended filesystem attributes, and some typos of
cryptography. This is one of the reasons we recommend that you keep a backup
copy of the distribution provided kernel image around, just in case.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation offers prebuilt binary kernel images in the same Git
repository that they use for firmware. To get a copy of this Git tree, see the instructions
in
Hack #04
.
Remember that this Git tree has two branches:
master
, which is targeted for the Rasp-
berry Pi Linux kernel 3.2-based source tree, and
next
, which is targeted for the Rasp-
berry Pi Linux kernel 3.6-based source tree. You need to make sure that your kernel
and firmware revision versions match; otherwise, your kernel might not boot (or fea-
tures might not work the way that you expect). The file locations for the prebuilt kernel
files are identical for both branches of the Git repository.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation's prebuilt Linux kernel is handy, having been designed
for use with the Pi, and it contains a wide range of common device driver modules.
However, it is missing some modules that you might need when connecting periph-
erals. If this is the case, you will want to build a custom Linux kernel from source, as
covered in
Hack #22
.
Get the Prebuilt Linux Kernel
The prebuilt Linux kernel images come in two parts:
• The core Linux kernel image (
firmware/boot/kernel.img
)
• The prebuilt Linux kernel modules that correspond to that image (
firmware/
modules
)
You can view the history of builds for the core Linux kernel image via the
GitHub web-
drop-down on the website, or replace
master
with
next
in the URL.
Alternative Prebuilt Kernel Variants
The Raspberry Pi foundation also provides two alternative variants of this
prebuilt kernel:
