Request for explantion

[Robert Romito]

Hi.  

I've been compiling my own kernels for a few months now and am not 
convinced that I'm doing it right.  I've read the kernel how-to and know 
the steps to take to generate the kernel executable: make xconfig; make 
dep; make clean; make bzImage; make modules; make modules_install.  I've 
followed this process before and my kernel always boots fine.  When I 
download new kernel source, I put in into /usr/src/linux-<kernel_ver> 
and symlink /usr/src/linux to the kernel source dir that I want.  Then I 
cd to /usr/src/linux, run make xconfig, blah, blah, blah.

Recently I was reading the readme that comes with the kernel source and 
it said I should'nt have /usr/src/linux point to the new kernel source 
because:

"This area has a (usually incomplete) set of kernel headers that are 
used by the library header files.  They should match the library, and 
not get messed up by whatever the kernel-du-jour happens to be."

What exactly is this statement referring to?  Does it mean that my glibc 
libraries use the headers under /usr/src/linux and /usr/src/linux should 
not change unless I change my version of glibc?  Or perhaps the library 
header files are related to something else?  Do I need to compile a new 
kernel, boot the kernel and then recompile the same kernel source so 
it's using the correct headers?

I know how C header files work, but am not an expert.  I've tried 
finding details about this on the web without much luck.  Any assistance 
would be appreciated.

Robert Romito.