make modules_install restarts configuration process

Question

I am trying to compile a Linux kernel version (linux-2.6.32.60) for my Debian machine. The first step was to create a configuration file (.config) by typing:

make xconfig

Once the configuration file was created, I simply ran make, to build the image kernel and modules. Up to that point no problem.

However, when installing the modules (.ko files), I type:

make modules_install

which instead of installing the newly compiled modules, brings a command line configuration setup, which is incorrect (the configuration file was already created).

Any ideas what is causing the configuration to be restarted?

Regards.

Answer 1

Set the ARCH variable before calling menuconfig

$ make ARCH=arm menuconfig

Answer 2

The issue was caused because of a development environment variable in my O.S setting ARCH to be i386 (that was required for running some infrastructure in our office). Since my kernel runs in a 64-bit processor and xconfig relies on a variable with the same name, the resulting .config file was being generated for a 32-bit architecture, and so was the whole compilation process. In the end, this was causing the installation error (which is indeed expected).