ps stops working when I reconfigure the kernel

[Joerg Schilling - H. Berthold AG Berlin]

This seemes to be interesting for all those people who are going to
rekonfigure their kernel for the first time:

'ps' and 'w' are looking for the namelist in /vmunix to figure out the
adresses of various objects (i.e. the proc structure) in the kernel memory.
'ps' cannot verify that the file /vmunix is the kernel you are running
now. It simply assumes that everything is ok and gets bogus values.
Depending on *how wrong* these values are, 'ps' either gets a segmentation
violation or simply displays nothing than the header.

The fact that you cannot get 'ps' to do it's work even if the kernel is a
generic one let me assume that you have a different /vmunix in your root
directory than that you are running. If you know the name of the vmunix
that you are running you can get 'ps' get to work if you type:
ps -ax /vmunix.test

if /vmunix.test is that one you are currently running.

The 'w' command has *no* way to specify a different kernel than /vmunix,
it will never work, if you are using a kernel different from /vmunix.

Hope this helps.

        J. Schilling
        H. Berthold AG
        Teltowkanalstr. 1-4
        D 1000 Berlin 46
        +49 30  7795 - 400

joerg at berthold.de

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