[kwlug disc.] Kernel Compilation Woes

[Damian Gerow]

Thus spake Kyle Spaans (3lucid at gmail.com) [11/02/07 22:20]:
: >Yes.  With the 2.6 line of kernels, a 'make install' generally suffices to
: >install your kernel.  I believe, anyhow.
: 
: Oops, I forgot to say that I did try
: % sudo make install
: But it didn't working, and I forget what the errors were that I got.

TBH, I've never had luck with automated kernel installs.  And as it's just a
matter of copying a few files over and potentially adding a few lines to a
configuration file, I've never really seen it as a big deal.

: So for the ramdisk image, because I've done the 'make
: modules_install', I should be good?

Well, modules_install will install the modules, but not the ramdisk image,
as you shouldn't need one.  That being said, as you're not booting, you
appear to be missing a few required drivers.

If you can get the full boot message online, that will help to figure out
what's going on.  Otherwise, you need to look for a few things:

1) That you get an appropriate 'hd' driver in your boot.  So if your hard
drive is seen as /dev/hda under the working kernel, make sure /dev/hda is
found under your custom kernel.  This could be /dev/hdb, /dev/hdc, etc.

2) Make sure the boot parameters are the same in your boot manager.  More
than once I've been bitten because I didn't copy over LILO or Grub flags
properly, and the system just didn't know which partition was the root
partition.

3) Whatever filesystem you're using for your root partition (likely ext2 or
ext3), make sure support for that is in your kernel.

Those are the three most common problems found when booting a custom kernel
gives you the error you've seen (I believe, anyhow -- like I said, it's been
some time).

  - Damian