Building the linux-jarvisos Kernel

Requirement: Arch-based host system. The kernel build uses makepkg, which is Arch-specific. The pacman -U install step requires pacman. You cannot build and install this kernel on a Fedora or Debian host — use an Arch, Manjaro, EndeavourOS, or CachyOS machine.

Prerequisites

sudo pacman -S base-devel bc flex bison openssl libelf pahole ccache

ccache is optional but strongly recommended — it makes incremental rebuilds ~5–10× faster.

Initialize the kernel submodule

git clone --recursive https://github.com/JarvisOSLinux/jarvisos.git
cd jarvisos

# If already cloned without --recursive:
git submodule update --init linux-jarvisos

The linux-jarvisos/ submodule tracks the jarvisos-7.0-stable branch — the upstream 7.0.2 kernel tree plus the JARVIS driver tree under drivers/jarvis/.

Build modes

Option A — Build and install on your running system

The fastest way to run the JARVIS kernel on your own machine. Builds the packages on the host and installs them with pacman:

cd scripts
bash 03b-build-kernel.sh --host-install

After install, reboot and select linux-jarvisos from your bootloader (GRUB or systemd-boot) — the GRUB entry is added automatically by the linux-jarvisos.install hook.

Build time: 20–60 min on first run. Subsequent runs with ccache take 2–5 min.

Option B — Build packages only

For the ISO pipeline or manual inspection:

cd scripts
bash 03b-build-kernel.sh
# Packages land in build/kernel-pkg/
# linux-jarvisos-*.pkg.tar.zst
# linux-jarvisos-headers-*.pkg.tar.zst

Skip recompilation when packages are already built

SKIP_KERNEL_BUILD=1 bash 03b-build-kernel.sh --host-install

Verifying the kernel is active

uname -r
# Should output something like: 7.0.2-jarvisos-g5fffde5bcf9e

ls -l /dev/jarvis                                  # Kernel character device
cat /sys/class/misc/jarvis/sysmon/cpu_load          # Live hardware metrics
cat /sys/class/misc/jarvis/sysmon/mem_avail
cat /sys/class/misc/jarvis/sysmon/thermal
cat /sys/class/misc/jarvis/policy/policy_table      # Loaded AI security policy table

Kernel config options

The packages/linux-jarvisos/PKGBUILD applies these config symbols on top of the host kernel config:

Build issues? See Troubleshooting.