I need to update the kernel timer on my Ubuntu Lucid (10.04) server on

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Asked: May 26, 20262026-05-26T18:41:04+00:00 2026-05-26T18:41:04+00:00

I need to update the kernel timer on my Ubuntu Lucid (10.04) server on

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I need to update the kernel timer on my Ubuntu Lucid (10.04) server on EC2 (with EBS) from 250HZ to 1000HZ, to improve voip call quality.

From what I’ve read, the way to do that is to download the kernel source code, configure it, then install it.

I’ve found several decent tutorials that are fairly specific to my setup, the best of which are:

That’s led to me to the following sets of commands, which all run nicely, making the .deb files with no obvious errors. But then when I restart the server the timer frequency hasn’t been updated.

sudo apt-get build-dep linux-image-$(uname -r)
sudo apt-get build-dep linux
sudo apt-get install fakeroot build-essential
sudo apt-get install crash kexec-tools makedumpfile kernel-wedge
sudo apt-get install libncurses5 libncurses5-dev
sudo apt-get install libelf-dev asciidoc binutils-dev kernel-package

cd /usr/src
sudo apt-get source linux-image-$(uname -r)

cd linux-*
sudo make menuconfig
# Processor type and features -> Timer frequency -> change to 1000HZ -> Exit -> Exit -> Yes (Save)

fakeroot debian/rules clean
fakeroot debian/rules binary-headers
fakeroot debian/rules binary-indep   #This does the headers, docs, and source

#check deb 2-3 files were created
cd ..
ls *.deb

sudo dpkg -i linux-*.deb
#reboot

EDIT

Spent some time with jjohansen on irc #ubuntu-kernel, and was able to find my mistake with his help – looks like I should have done the configuration step in between the clean and build. Also, he recommended to always use the source from git rather than the package, so these are the new commands to do in the middle of what I had above:

cd /usr/src
# This is 700mb so it takes a while to download and set up
git clone git://kernel.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ubuntu-lucid.git
cd ubuntu*
git checkout --track -b ec2 origin/ec2

fakeroot debian/rules clean
fakeroot debian/rules editconfigs
fakeroot debian/rules binary
#Takes about 40min