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Kernel on Arch (AUR)

Kernel on Arch (AUR)

linux-runink, the Runink River kernel, is also packaged for Arch Linux, in the AUR, as a community package. You can run it on an existing Arch system next to your current kernel.

Not an official Arch Linux package. linux-runink and zfs-linux-runink are community packages in the AUR. Arch Linux did not make, review or endorse them.

Publication pending. The packaging is in this repository (packaging/aur/), and the AUR packages have not been published yet. Until they are, the commands below will not find them.

What you get

The zen kernel 7.2.x stable series with the data-work configuration described in The linux-runink kernel: 250 Hz tick, lazy preemption, transparent huge pages on madvise, BBR with fq, zen’s interactivity bundle off, CPU vulnerability mitigations and hardening on. It is built from the signed kernel.org tarball and the signed zen patch; the configuration files are fetched from a tag of this repository and checked against sha256 pins.

Before you install

  • The kernel is compiled for x86-64-v3 (AVX2, BMI2, FMA, MOVBE: Intel Haswell, AMD Excavator and newer). The PKGBUILD refuses to build on a CPU without it; build with RUNINK_MARCH=x86-64 or x86-64-v2 for an older CPU.
  • Hibernation, kexec/kdump, /dev/mem and /proc/kcore are disabled. Keep another kernel if you need them.
  • It is a full distribution kernel: building takes a long time.
  • It does not carry Runink River’s runtime settings (preempt=full on a desktop, zram tuning); those belong to the Runink River image. On a desktop, consider adding preempt=full to your kernel command line.

Build and install

With an AUR helper:

paru -S linux-runink linux-runink-headers

By hand:

git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/linux-runink.git
cd linux-runink
gpg --import keys/pgp/*.asc        # the kernel.org and zen signing keys, shipped with the package
makepkg -si                        # verifies sha256 and signatures, then builds

mkinitcpio’s pacman hook creates /boot/vmlinuz-linux-runink and /boot/initramfs-linux-runink.img as for any Arch kernel. Then add a boot entry:

  • GRUB: sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

  • systemd-boot: add /boot/loader/entries/linux-runink.conf, adapting options from your existing entry:

    title   Arch Linux (linux-runink)
linux   /vmlinuz-linux-runink
initrd  /initramfs-linux-runink.img
options root=UUID=<your-root-uuid> rw

ZFS

Pick one:

  • zfs-dkms (AUR) builds OpenZFS for every installed kernel, linux-runink included, and follows kernel upgrades by itself.
  • zfs-linux-runink (AUR) is OpenZFS 2.4.4 prebuilt for exactly this linux-runink release. It depends on the AUR’s zfs-utils for the userland and conflicts with zfs-dkms.

With a ZFS root, rebuild the initramfs after installing the modules: sudo mkinitcpio -P.

Remove it 

sudo pacman -Rns linux-runink linux-runink-headers   # and zfs-linux-runink, if installed

Then regenerate your GRUB menu or delete the systemd-boot entry.

Measure it yourself

Whether the profile is faster than linux-zen or linux-lts on your workload is to be measured: no comparison has been published. bench/analytics/ is the harness (TPC-H on DuckDB, fio, memory bandwidth, sort and join; five measured repetitions per suite), and docs/KERNEL.md describes a fair comparison. Maintainers publish the packages following packaging/aur/PUBLISHING.md.

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