I have a HP-Compaq celeron machine having 2.2 Ghz,128 MB RAM , 80GB ide hdd.

Previously the machine was loaded with Mandrake linux. Now i am to load RH8. The installation is perfect.

Now after installation of RH8, i am trying to compile the kernel as per my needs. I am doing it as follows The Kernel Source is also loaded).

# cd /usr/src/linux-2.4.18

# make menuconfig
( Here i am selecting the options i want to be in kernel).

# make dep

# make install
Here the compilation goes smoothly. No error occurs. This is the custom kernel. Also the command 'make install' creates necessary entry in grub.conf file also.

If i Reboot the machines and boots with the custom kernel I am getting following errors :

"kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k ext3, error = 2
kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k freeext3 error = 2

mount: error 19 mounting ext3
pivotroot: pivot_root(/sysroot,/sysroot/initrd) failed: 2
umount /initrd/proc failed: 2
freeing unused kernel memory 184k freed
Kernel panic:No init found. Try passing init= option to kernel."

I have also tried to edit the kernel entry in grub and added the option init=5 (also tried init = 3) and tried to boot this kernel. But i am getting the same error.

Can somebody guide me in this regard ?

Thanks in Advance.

_ Jagdish.

Goodness me... why?!
... "make xconfig" ... surely?

You forgot to mention...

make modules
make modules install

you have to copy th bzimage into /root (and give it a proper name)
you have to make the initrd
you have to check the created grub.conf entry ... I am not aware of makefiles below 2.4.22 doing this properly. (Certainly didn't for me!)

But it looks like you forgot to compile the module for the filesystem.

I am doing the compilation from text. Hence i have mentioned the stemp as :

# make menuconfig


Yes. I forgot to compile the module for ext3. So i selected that modules from file systems and compiled the kernel.

Now it is working perfectly.

But i have not followed the steps

# make modules
# make modules_install

Still it is working properly.

Thanks for the reply.

So why RH8? You realize there will be no end of trouble with it?
You are probably better using it as the starting point for an LFS install!

You may be thinking that it is none of my business?
However... legacy distros can have security problems (updating the kernel will have addressed some of this) and the experience of others in the community affects perceptions of linux as a whole.

And I have an interest in how people find legacy distros useful.