i am trying to recompile my kernel from 2.4 to 2.6.3 and some of it doesn't work. when ever i compile it, and then reboot, the usb drivers don't work, and also the vfat. And i when i boot up there is just a black screen, a pure black screen, then the login menu. i have try like 15 time, it is geting on my nerves. could i be doing something wrong, or im i not making the config file right? should i just use a .rpm. is there an rpm file that i can get, and if there is where is it?

What distro are you running .. these problems look like you missed something in the kernel configure. The blank screen is most often related to missing config options for "Console display driver support" as for the USB again it looks like missing options. If you have the CD's for your distro ... I assume it is RPM based you can find the kernel source rpm or on one of the source cds there will be a kernel config file for the 2.4 kernel and you can convert it to 2.6 by cp the one from the cd to the new 2.6.3 source tree as .config and running make old config .. it will convert the file and only ask for new options.

Some other things to look into are the version of modinit utils like modprobe insmod etc and see if they are up to date. There are a number of prerequisites to getting 2.6 up and running on a 2.4 based system.

Here is good link

http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/799

-Matt

thx for that i will try it