Kernel compiling revisited

[tarballed]

Hello everyone. Well, I finally was able to find the necessary libraries for ncurses. I installed the libraries and was ready to start compiling my kernel.

I was pretty excited at this point, because I did a lot of research and felt that I had a pretty good idea of the correct way to compile a kernel. So let me give a run down of what I did: (FYI, running RH 7.2)

Downloaded source to /usr/src. Renamed current linux dir to the kernel in use (2.4.9-31)

Untarred the ball and renamed the directory linux to linux-2.4.18.

Changed to the directory and ran make xconfig.
Ran Make dep
ran make clean
ran make bzImage followed by make modules ; make modules_install.

copied over the kernel image and system.map to /boot. Edited lilo.conf and ran lilo.

At this point, I thought I had it made.
Well, I didnt. This is what happened, when I rebooted and chose my new kernel.

It proceeded to uncompress the kernel after I selected it from lilo.

Seemed to working ok, BUT, right after it was going through the part where it would say OK or FAILEd, i started receiving FAILED messages: Here are a couple that I can recall off the top of my head:

I remember one was that it could not find /etc/fstab. Another was that it could not find the settings for network/eth0. (I'm tring to pull this from memory so bear with me) Eventually, it does not finish booting. :-X

So, when I thought I had it all figured out, I get a slap in the face.

Anyways, questions: Could it be the options I picked when I ran make xconfig? Since this is my first kernel compile, I thought I did it right. I'm not so sure now.

Does anyone have any idea what could possibly be wrong and if so, a solution?

I'm a little zonked here, so any help here would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks everyone.

A sad TARBALL :'(

Does anyone have suggestions on what fou

[Kernel_Killer]

Mosyt likely it's your modules you added to the kernel. Give it a couple more tries, and you'll get it. Just add the stuff you actually need. ( I also learned this the hard way )

The easy way: 'Upgrade' to RH 7.3 ;D uses 2.4.18-4

[pbharris]

Hello,
It sounds like you did not compile in support for your filesystem type...

[Stix]

Hi,
I don't know about anyone else, but I like to run:

make mrproper

before make <x,menu>config. This thoroughly cleans up the kernel configuration directories before you acually configure it. It's just one extra step to insure a good build.

As KK and pbharris said, you're probably gonna have to do this a few times to get it the way you want.

BTW, Good job for your first time, congrats

[tarballed]

Ok...been trying to figure this out...it appears to be hangning when it checks for USB...thats the first part where it hangs. It then proceeds to give errors about not being able to find /etc/fstab as well as kudzo. Then it said it could not find the configurations for eth0.

I'm confused here. could it be that when I issued the make menuconfig, I specified some incorrect stuff for the new kernel?

It doesnt make sense. Any other ideas?

Tarballed

[pbharris]

<snip>
I'm confused here. could it be that when I issued the make menuconfig, I specified some incorrect stuff for the new kernel?
</snip>

I am almost positive this is what has happened, try loaing the original config file - it is in /boot for redhat, then revmove items you know you don't need.

[tarballed]

Ok....another quick question..

How can I see what is and what is not enabled for the current kernel on my system?

Maybe I could compare the two to see what is different and what I did wrong?

Anyone have any suggestions on what exactly to look for when going through the make menuconfig?

Thanks everyone!

Tarballed

:'(

[pbharris]

well - i use gtkdiff to compare files. do a google search for it and you will get plenty of useful hits. you can the use this to compare config files, the config file you made is at:

/usr/src/linux/.config