Deterministic Linux Kernel Builds

As an experiment I wanted to see if I could deterministically build the Linux kernel twice in a row. My goal was to have two kernels where the bzImage result hashes to the same sha256 hash.

I saw that a patchset had been merged a while back[1], but the script provided didn't work out of the box for me. (And why should it!? It was written in 2011!) It got me going in the right direction, which is all I needed to get it to work.

#!/usr/bin/bash export INSTALL_MOD_STRIP=-s export KBUILD_BUILD_TIMESTAMP=0 export KBUILD_BUILD_USER=root export KBUILD_BUILD_HOST=localhost make mrproper make allnoconfig make -j4

It's even much simpler than the original script, although the original did more than just build the kernel. Running this script twice in a row compiling for x86_64 with the same libraries (and versions) installed should result in the same sha256 hashes. I tried it on two different machines and a virtual machine after updating my packages to the most recent versions. Next I'll try some configs other than allnoconfig, but it was just convenient and fastest to compile.

[1] http://lwn.net/Articles/437864/

Some additional links on deterministic builds I found interesting:

https://blog.torproject.org/category/tags/deterministic-builds https://archive.fosdem.org/2014/schedule/event/reproducibledebian/