As some packages need to refer to the kernel header files, we're going to unpack the kernel archive now, set it up, and copy the required files to a place where gcc can later find them. Prepare for the header installation with: make mrproper This ensures that the kernel tree is absolutely clean. The kernel team recommends that this command be issued prior to each kernel compilation. You shouldn't rely on the source tree being clean after untarring. Create the include/linux/version.h file: make include/linux/version.h Create the platform-specific include/asm symlink: make symlinks Install the platform-specific header files: mkdir /stage1/include/asm cp include/asm/* /stage1/include/asm cp -R include/asm-generic /stage1/include Install the cross-platform kernel header files: cp -R include/linux /stage1/include There are a few kernel header files which make use of the autoconf.h header file. Since we do not yet configure the kernel, we need to create this file ourselves in order to avoid compilation failures. Create an empty autoconf.h file: touch /stage1/include/linux/autoconf.h