My Other Howto's Here are some useful notes on how to handle patches building patches applying patches $ cd my-src/linux/ To test $ patch --dry-run -Np0 < acpi.patch For real: $ patch -p0 < acpi.patch creating patches The following was taken from the method used in nmap 1. Remove temporary files: make clean 2. Rename your source tree: cd .. mv nmap-2.54BETA4 nmap-2.54BETA4-snazzy-feature 3. Unpack the original Nmap source alongside it: tar xzf nmap-2.54BETA4.tgz 4. Generate the diffs: diff -urNb nmap-2.54BETA4 nmap-2.54BETA4-snazzy-feature > nmap.patch 5. Check the patch and remove any unnecessary patches from the file. 6. If you've added several features, it's best to send them as several independent patches if you can. If you have just patched one or two files, then making patches is even easier. For each file, just do: cp file.c file.c.orig [Make changes to file.c ...] diff -u file.c.orig file.c > file.c.patch and just send the patch: file.c.patch. My Other Howto's