Comment 32 for bug 272247

So I worked on doing a kernel bisect some this weekend, and ran into a few problems. First, I couldn't figure out how to specify the exact versions of the kernel that I knew were good and bad. Instead of being able to specify that the known good/bad kernels are 2.6.26-rc9 and 2.6.27-3, I could only specify that they were 2.6.26 and 2.6.27, which led to nearly 18,000 revisions to check.

1st question is, how can I specify the exact kernel versions that I know are good and bad? When I try, I get the following errors:
chris@chris-laptop:~/Temp/ubuntu-intrepid-git$ git bisect bad 2.6.27-3
fatal: Needed a single revision
Bad rev input: 2.6.27-3

2nd question:
After getting the revisions to check down to a few hundred, I started getting odd errors, and I'm pretty sure I messed up somewhere, so I decided to start over. I tried the git bisect reset command, but get the following error when I tried that.

chris@chris-laptop:~/Temp/ubuntu-intrepid-git$ git bisect reset
error: Untracked working tree file 'debian/changelog' would be overwritten by merge.

How can I get around this, and restart the bisect?

3rd question:
After not being able to use the git bisect reset command, I deleted the entire directory, and checked it out again in a clean directory, then tried the bisect again. It seems to go ok, until I try to build the kernel. Then I get this error:

chris@chris-laptop:~/Temp/ubuntu-intrepid-git$ CONCURRENCY_LEVEL=2 fakeroot make-kpkg --initrd --append-to-version=-custom kernel_image kernel_headers
exec debian/rules DEBIAN_REVISION=2.6.26-custom-10.00.Custom APPEND_TO_VERSION=-custom INITRD=YES kernel_image kernel_headers
[: 1: 2: unexpected operator
[: 1: 2: unexpected operator
[: 1: 3: unexpected operator
[: 1: 2: unexpected operator
[: 1: 2: unexpected operator
[: 1: 4: unexpected operator
[: 1: 2: unexpected operator
[: 1: 2: unexpected operator
[: 1: 2: unexpected operator
[: 1: 2: unexpected operator
[: 1: 2: unexpected operator
[: 1: 2: unexpected operator
[: 1: 2: unexpected operator
[: 1: 2: unexpected operator
[: 1: 2: unexpected operator
[: 1: 2: unexpected operator
[: 1: 2: unexpected operator
[: 1: 2: unexpected operator

====== making target CONFIG-common [new prereqs: testdir]======

====== making target CONFIG-common [new prereqs: stamp-conf]======
This is kernel package version 11.001-0.1.
====== making stamp-arch-conf because of ======

====== making target CONFIG-arch [new prereqs: stamp-arch-conf]======
====== making target conf.vars [new prereqs: Makefile .config]======

Makefile:510: /home/chris/Temp/ubuntu-intrepid-git/arch/xen/Makefile: No such file or directory
make[1]: *** No rule to make target `/home/chris/Temp/ubuntu-intrepid-git/arch/xen/Makefile'. Stop.
make: *** [conf.vars] Error 2

What would be causing this error? I'm getting it every time I try to compile the kernel since I deleted the old directory and checked it out again.