I am trying to recompile the kernel to enable LVM support. I have tried to use both the kernel that comes with redhat 7.2 (2.4.7-10) and the latest stable kernel (2.4.17). I keep on getting this error message when trying to `make xconfig`:

rm -f include/asm
( cd include ; ln -sf asm-i386 asm)
make -C scripts kconfig.tk
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/priorc/src/linux-2.4.17/scripts'
gcc -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer -c -o tkparse.o tkparse.c
/tmp/ccicVHiv.s: Assembler messages:
/tmp/ccicVHiv.s:15: Warning: Unrecognized .section attribute: want a,w,x
/tmp/ccicVHiv.s:15: Warning: Unrecognized .section attribute: want a,w,x
/tmp/ccicVHiv.s:15: Error: Rest of line ignored. First ignored character is `,'.
/tmp/ccicVHiv.s:37: Warning: Unrecognized .section attribute: want a,w,x
/tmp/ccicVHiv.s:37: Warning: Unrecognized .section attribute: want a,w,x
/tmp/ccicVHiv.s:37: Error: Rest of line ignored. First ignored character is `,'.
/tmp/ccicVHiv.s:63: Warning: Unrecognized .section attribute: want a,w,x
/tmp/ccicVHiv.s:63: Warning: Unrecognized .section attribute: want a,w,x
/tmp/ccicVHiv.s:63: Error: Rest of line ignored. First ignored character is `,'.
/tmp/ccicVHiv.s:188: Warning: Unrecognized .section attribute: want a,w,x
/tmp/ccicVHiv.s:188: Warning: Unrecognized .section attribute: want a,w,x
/tmp/ccicVHiv.s:188: Error: Rest of line ignored. First ignored character is `,'.
/tmp/ccicVHiv.s:323: Warning: Unrecognized .section attribute: want a,w,x
/tmp/ccicVHiv.s:323: Warning: Unrecognized .section attribute: want a,w,x
/tmp/ccicVHiv.s:323: Error: Rest of line ignored. First ignored character is `,'.
/tmp/ccicVHiv.s:594: Warning: Unrecognized .section attribute: want a,w,x
/tmp/ccicVHiv.s:594: Warning: Unrecognized .section attribute: want a,w,x
/tmp/ccicVHiv.s:594: Error: Rest of line ignored. First ignored character is `,'.
/tmp/ccicVHiv.s:724: Warning: Unrecognized .section attribute: want a,w,x
/tmp/ccicVHiv.s:724: Warning: Unrecognized .section attribute: want a,w,x
/tmp/ccicVHiv.s:724: Error: Rest of line ignored. First ignored character is `,'.
/tmp/ccicVHiv.s:785: Warning: Unrecognized .section attribute: want a,w,x
/tmp/ccicVHiv.s:785: Warning: Unrecognized .section attribute: want a,w,x
/tmp/ccicVHiv.s:785: Error: Rest of line ignored. First ignored character is `,'.
/tmp/ccicVHiv.s:798: Warning: Unrecognized .section attribute: want a,w,x
/tmp/ccicVHiv.s:798: Warning: Unrecognized .section attribute: want a,w,x
/tmp/ccicVHiv.s:798: Error: Rest of line ignored. First ignored character is `,'.
/tmp/ccicVHiv.s:808: Warning: Unrecognized .section attribute: want a,w,x
/tmp/ccicVHiv.s:808: Warning: Unrecognized .section attribute: want a,w,x
/tmp/ccicVHiv.s:808: Error: Rest of line ignored. First ignored character is `,'.
/tmp/ccicVHiv.s:2068: Warning: Unrecognized .section attribute: want a,w,x
/tmp/ccicVHiv.s:2068: Warning: Unrecognized .section attribute: want a,w,x
/tmp/ccicVHiv.s:2068: Error: Rest of line ignored. First ignored character is `,'.
make[1]: *** [tkparse.o] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/priorc/src/linux-2.4.17/scripts'
make: *** [xconfig] Error 2

I have tried just using the text based configuration method and this worked fine, however when I came to `make bzImage` the same error occured. Does anyone know what this could be?

Cheers,

Chris

Check if your binutils package version matches the requirements for the kernel. Version requirements are in /usr/src/linux/Documentation.

Cheers! That was it! I had forgotten that I had downgraded binutils to allow an intall of Oracle 8i. At the time I remember thinking "I must remeber to upgrade this again!".

Thanks for your help.