[ale] Applying a patch to RedHat

[Joe Bayes]

Bob Kruger typeth:

>I just went to apply Alan Cox's service patch four to fix the ICMP denial
>of service problem.  All of the source directories are /usr/src/linux, with
>linux being linked to /usr/src/linux-2.2.9.  Because of the directory
>naming convention that Alan uses, I have also linux /usr/src/linux.vanilla
>to /usr/src/linux-2.2.9.  My procedure is to copy the patch file to the
>/usr/src directory, and then patch < patch-2.2.9-ac4.

You don't need to bother with making a bunch of new directories: check
out the -p option to patch. I did my last upgrade with:

cd /usr/src/linux
patch -p1 /usr/src/linux-patches/patch-2.2.9-ac3

>With the Redhat systems, I continually get a message asking for the
>location of the file to be patched.  

I get that problem sometimes, usually when I'm in the wrong directory,
or when I give the wrong number to -p. Look at the patch if you're
having problems; you should be able to figure out what directory and
-p number to use. 

That said, I don't know why you were having the problem, as mucking
with symlinks sounds like a workable, if messy, solution. But it's
probably easier to work around the problem than to try to solve it. :)

--joe