I need to recompile my kernel in order to support NTFS filesystem on my desktop. I am using Red Hat 7.2 which has a kernel version of 2.4.7-10.

Being a newbiw I never did such "advance" things before. Nevertheless I downloaded 27MB source code of 2.4 kernel from kernel.org (using dial up modem !!!)

Anyway untar the source code in /usr/src and all the files from source code went into /usr/src/linux. So far so good.

Then I started using the kernel rebuild procedure given at
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Kernel-HOWTO-2.html

However I was always stucking duing make bzImage. I am pasting last few lines of my nohup.out (log file) so that you may see what is wrong.

gcc -D__KERNEL__ -I/usr/src/linux/include -Wall
-Wstrict-prototypes -Wno-trigraphs -O2
-fomit-frame-pointer -fno-strict-aliasing -fno-common
-pipe -mpreferred-stack-boundary=2 -march=i686
-DEXPORT_SYMTAB -c ksyms.c
In file included from ksyms.c:17:
/usr/src/linux/include/linux/kernel_stat.h: In
function `kstat_irqs':
/usr/src/linux/include/linux/kernel_stat.h:48:
`smp_num_cpus' undeclared (first use in this function)
/usr/src/linux/include/linux/kernel_stat.h:48: (Each
undeclared identifier is reported only once
/usr/src/linux/include/linux/kernel_stat.h:48: for
each function it appears in.)
make[2]: *** [ksyms.o] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux/kernel'
make[1]: *** [first_rule] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux/kernel'
make: *** [_dir_kernel] Error 2

Please let me know what is wrong !!!

Thanks
Salman

your best bet is to just install the source rpm from the distro cd's and change the options you want in there, there's much more chance of it working first time that way. I'm not sure it the source's .config file is identical to that used to make the kernel rpm, if not, the config file should be something like /boot/config-2.4.7-10 load it from make xconfig and go from there.

i think ntfs read-only is supported as a module tho in most default kernels, and write support is not recommended

Ah... I did this too, and it took me a second to figure it out. Lemme guess if this is what you did:

From /usr/src/ you

tar xvzf linux-2.4.x.tar.gz right?

if you already had kernel source in there, then there was a symlink pointing to 2.4.7-10... which when you untared the other source, it went through the symlink and replaced everything that was already in the directory, except what didn't have a replacement... therefore you end up with all of these extra defs and garbage that doinked up the compile.

If you actually didn't have kernel source on the machine to start with then I'm dead off, so just ignore me. Even if you did everything exactly right, sometimes the kernel won't compile. Change the parameters and try again.

Luck,

Finegan

Wait... re-reading your post again, I'm almost certain RH7.2 will have ntfs support built as a module called, surprise: ntfs.o
try modprobe ntfs and see if its there.

this was my first guess when i read the post - it's one of the oddities that anyone who messes with kernels needs to know.

I always untar a new kernel src in my user directory, then do "mv linux/ /usr/src/linux-*version*" then "rm linux" followed by "ln-s linux-*version* linux. Of course you need to make sure any existing kernel src in /usr/src is named "linux-*version*" and "linux" is a sym link before you do this.