There are three major parts to this book. The first part is composed of Chapters 1 through 6, which cover everything you need to know about retrieving, building, installing, and upgrading the Linux kernel, in more or less step-by-step fashion.

The second part consists of Chapters 7 and 8, which describe how to properly configure the kernel based on the hardware present in the system, and provides a number of different "recipes" for common configurations.

The final part consists of Chapters 9 through 11. These chapters provide a reference to the different kernel command line options, the kernel build options, and a select few of the different kernel configuration options.

Chapter 1, Introduction, explains when and why you would want to build the kernel.

Chapter 2, Requirements For Building and Using the Kernel, covers the different programs and tools that are needed in order to properly build the kernel. It also covers a number of different programs that are tied very closely to the kernel, how to determine the needed version of the programs, and where to find them.

Chapter 3, Retrieving the kernel source discusses how the different Linux kernel versions relate to each other, where to retrieve the Linux kernel source code from, and how to download it properly.

Chapter 4, Configuring and Building explains how to configure and properly build the Linux kernel.

Chapter 5, Installing and Booting from a Kernel shows how to install the kernel that has been built properly, and then boot into that kernel version.

Chapter 6, Upgrading a Kernel explains how to upgrade a kernel that was previously built to a newer version without having to start over from nothing.

Chapter 7, Customizing a Kernel discusses how to customize the kernel for the hardware that is present on the system. It goes over a variety of different ways to determine what options should be selected and provides some simple scripts to help with the task.

Chapter 8, Kernel Configuration Recipes explains how to configure the kernel for a variety of common situations.

Chapter 9, Kernel boot command-line parameter reference details all of the different command-line options that can be passed to the kernel, and what the different options do.

Chapter 10, Kernel build command line reference describes the different command line options that are available when building the kernel and how to use them.

Chapter 11, Kernel Configuration Option Reference focuses on a few of the more popular and important Linux kernel configuration options.

Appendix A, Helpful Utilities introduces a number of very good and handy tools that everyone who wishes to track the latest Linux kernel version should use.