Kernel compiling question

[Pleiades]

I have 6 machines of various hardware configurations running a few distro's (Debian 2.2, RH 7.1, Slack 8 and Mandrake 8.1). I would like to keep the development tools on the one (firewalled) machine, so.......

Are there any problems with compiling kernels on one distro for a machine running a different distro? Lets say HAL is running 'drake 8.1 (2.4.8 kernel), and Zen is running RH 7.1 (2.4.?). Assuming I select all the correct options, can I compile a kernel on HAL and then drop it into Zen?

I'm going to have a look at Debian.org to find out about upgrading a 2.2 kernel to 2.4. If you know of any good how_to's on this, could you point me to it/them? Ta.

[pbharris]

hello,
upgrading debian 2.2.x (potato) look here:
http://www.fs.tum.de/~bunk/kernel-24.html

yea - it is pretty common to build a kernel on one machine and transfer it to another. i think it it is in the kernel how-to.

[Schotty]

Its perfectly fine. In fact, how do you think binary packages are made

Just make sure you compile for the weakest architecture you have. Meaning, if hou have a p1 p2 a p3 and a p4, you need to compile for a 586, not 686 (p1 wont work).

[Pleiades]

pbharris - cheers, I did the upgrade as described at that site. I compiled a kernel, but it hangs at the SCSI card at boot. I'll have to try again. I kept the old kernel

Schotty - gotcha.

[redhead]

Since the kernel is staticaly linked (it has to be, how are you gonna load some shared thing befor you can mount a partition... )
Its gonna be fine, just to build on one machine and transfer it to another.. I usualy use my dual PIII for compiling the kernel for my 486-66mhz firewall, imagine the load/compile-time it would have to take if I were to compile on it, plus the extra 120mb the kernel code itself is.. You won't find many 400mb HD with room for that, once you've installed OS+compiler..