Has anybody compiled a kernel under Redhat 7.2 yet?

[Jomboni]

I heard it was tough to do, that you had to apply tons of patches to get it working.

Is this true?

It comes with 2.4.7-10. I downloaded 2.4.15, compiled it with support for everything I needed (pretty much exactly the same as 2.4.7-10 came) and got tons of errors. It wouldn't detect my printer or let me into X. Hearing that there were some problems with that version, I got 2.4.12 instead... and that doesn't even have support for ext3 as far as I can tell... so if I used that, I couldn't access any of my files.

So, I decided to start simple. I would recompile the 2.4.7-10 kernel with one change - joystick support would be supported fully, not as a module. Did it... same problem as with 2.4.15!

Anyway, here is what I'm doing:
make xconfig
make dep
make clean
make bzImage
make modules
make modules_install

I rename bzImage to something... vmlinuz-versionnumber, and copy it to /boot.
I use mkinitrd to make an initrd. And I rename my System.map file and copy the new one over. Add the new entry in grub.conf:# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
# root (hd0,4)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/hda3
# initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hda
default=0
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd0,4)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Red Hat Linux (2.4.7-10)
root (hd0,4)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.7-10 ro root=/dev/hda3 hdd=ide-scsi
initrd /initrd-2.4.7-10.img
title Updated Kernel (2.4.7)
root (hd0,4)
kernel /bzImage ro root=/dev/hda3 hdd=ide-scsi
initrd /initrd-2.4.7
title DOS
rootnoverify (hd1,4)
chainloader +1
title Windows
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1(note - this time I didn't rename the new kernel, I left it as bzImage).

If anybody could help I'd really appreciate it! If you need any more info, just let me know. I'm trying to think ahead of anything else somebody might need to help figure this out... and right now this is all that's coming to mind.

[vhg119]

i have problems with kernel upgrades too.
i tried to upgrade to 2.4.15 ( i think) but i seem to get errors concerning ext3 filesystem support. couldnt fully boot up. and i refuse to do an rpm upgrade.

[bdg1983]

What type of errors are you getting? Just modules missing?

Why not use the default kernel configuration (defconfig or .config) from the original kernel as input to the new kernel (make xconfig) and then trim down or change whatever you don't need support for.

[Jomboni]

I'll try that, it seems like a good idea :D

If it doesn't work, I'll try and figure out how to post the errors (I can't exactly cut & paste since it does it at bootup). Maybe I'll just write them down! :eek:

[bdg1983]

You mean with a pen and paper?

Don't strain yourself. ;)

[Jomboni]

Alright, here's what happened!

I got 2.4.16 and compiled and installed it.

When I tried to run mkinitrd it couldn't find the /lib/modules/2.4.16 folder. Oddly enough, it wasn't created like the other ones were (I have a 2.4.7-10 and a 2.4.15-greased-turkey modules folder). I ignored it and just booted into the new kernel. It said it couldn't find /lib/modules/2.4.16/modules.dep or something along those lines. I thought, well, obviously!

And it wouldn't start x up.

Other than those 2 problems I didn't get any errors, which is a step up from last time. I'm just wondering why it didn't create the modules folder when I did everything exactly the same as the other times...

[Jomboni]

I GOT IT!

The reason that X wasn't starting is because I installed nvidia's drivers, and they were designed for the 2.4.7-10 kernel. So, when I upgraded they didn't work. Nvidia's website is down :( so tomorrow I'll get the srpm version, in the meantime I set it back to the standard driver which doesn't have OpenGL support... but it'll do for now.

As far as the other problems, I'm not entirely sure what went wrong. My only guess is that I had some options set wrong, and then when I took the old config and used that to compile the new kernel (with a few changes) it had everything set up the way I needed it.

So now I'm running my nice shiny new 2.4.16 kernel!