newly-installed kernel boot problem
 

(I'm running FC4 on a Toshia laptop.)

I'm trying to get ndiswrapper working with a windows driver for my wireless card. I went through the installation instructions in the ndiswrapper wiki, and eventually got to modprobe-ing the card. However, this caused the system to freeze, and I could only get it to reboot correctly by unloading the driver in the rescue CD shell.

I did a bit of research and came to the conclusion that the 4k stack size of my current kernel was causing the system to hang when I modprobed (the wiki said that windows drivers usually need 12k, so my 4 wasn't going to cut it). Through the wiki I found a new kernel rpm from Linuxant that was identical to my current kernel except for having a 16k stack size enabled. I figured this would solve the problem, so I downloaded the new kernel and installed it with "rpm -Uhv *filename*, as instructed by the wiki. I know it was installed correctly because it shows up in grub. However, when I try to boot the new kernel, the process gets to "Uncompressing Linux..... Ok, booting the kernel", waits 15 seconds or so, and then reboots the computer. What could be causing this failure to boot? Did I install it incorrectly? What can I do to fix it?

Incidentally, I found a kernel patch, also from linuxant, that I could probably use to bypass the kernel boot problem. If I apply the patch, I should get a 16k stack size kernel that should still be bootable. I don't know how to use or apply it, though, it's just a bunch of text.

Thanks for any replies!

First, you can try changing the kernel line in grub to use the actual drive/partition (root=/dev/hda5) instead of the partition (root=LABEL=/) label. Carefully review the top comments section of grub for the information. This should get you to hopefully boot, if not boot from the CD into rescue mode and install the kernel found on the CD.

Second, never install any kernel using 'rpm -Uhv' this results in any other already installed kernels to be removed(bad idea). Use 'rpm -ivh' instead, this will install the new kernel and keep the installed kernels.

Third, you could have (and should have) rebuilt your kernel with 16k stacks yourself;

http://www.digitalhermit.com/linux/K...ild-HOWTO.html

Review the installation guide on how to get and use the kernel source;
http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/releas...ata/#sn-kernel