recompiled kernel hangs up on startup
 

Hey there !

I recompiled my kernel to enable HIGHMEM. This is what I did :
cd /usr/src/linux
make menuconfigure
make dep
make bzImage

I then copied the new bzImage (arch/i386/boot/bzImage)
to /boot/vmlinuz (I made a copy of the latter)

I updated /etc/lilo.conf (I added a linux-LOWMEM entry to boot on the copy of my former vmlinuz, just in case...)

I ran /sbin/lilo to update lilo.

The beast booted once ; it was nice, I had lots of memory and all.
This morning, it just won't start.
Lilo starts, I choose the entry corresponding to my new vmlinuz.
It starts booting, checking and and detecting and loading stuff. Then I get a weird display (looks like a memory/CPU dump :

EFLAGS : 00010287
eax : 0029c568 ebx : c1000020 ecx : 42938000 edx : b23c7ba8
esi : 00000000 edi : 00000000 ebp : f7b91e70 esp : f7b91e4c
ds : 0018 es : 0018 ss : 0018
process kjournald (pid : 12, stackpage : f7b91000)
stack : 00000002 c1a715c0 42938000 00000000 00000000 00000000 f7b91c160 000001fe
f791c7f0 f7b91fb8 fc8fde97 f793eba0 f791c160 f7b91ea4 000001fe f709c3d4
00000001 00000ff4 f790d00c 00000001 f791c7f0 f793eba0 5a595857 000001fe
Call Trace : [<fc8fde97>] [<c0223ef1>] [<c011bca6>] [<c0119046>] [<fc900138>]
[<fc8fffe0>] [<c0107526>] [<fc900000>]

Code : 81 39 c0 3b 39 98 0f 84 b3 01 00 00 8b 75 f0 85 f6 74 0b 8b

modules/2.4.19-16mdkcustom/misc/snd.o
[ OK ]
)

Then it stops : nothing more happens and if I type on the keyboard, it prints right under the "modules/..." line.

I can boot using lowmem-linux, but I really don't have a clue on how make it run. I have installed the last version of ALSA. Could it be causing such a problem ?

So please, tell me : what step did I skip ? what did I do wrong ?and how can I fix it ?

Mimil

maybe ALSA causes problem ... but I hope it is not. Don't blame, but I suggest you to
recompile kernel once again, and I advise you to turn on all modules that you don't understand. I mean fro e.g there is a module :

"Low memory swaping through little endian cpu arch" - I don't really get what it means, so I just turn it on :)

next -> compile your source using such commands:
make dep
make clean
make bzImage
make modules
make modules_install
===============

update bootloader.

post problems here

Thanks nautilus_1987,

I'm going to do make modules and make modules_install
It probably can't work straight if the modules aren't compiled with highmem enabled.
However, I booted with my former kernel image, so if I go to /usr/src/linux and do make modules and make modules_install, will it work with the new settings ? (I know it's a pretty dumb question...)

Thanks,

Mimil

if you haven't done anything else in that dir it will compile greatfully :)

I can think of couple of possibilities:

1. Did you recompile your kernel modules ? If you have declared any modules, you should also do a

make modules
make modules_install

Note: this installs the modules over the existing modules of the kernel of the same version. Change the kernel version from say 2.4.21 to 2.4.21a if you want to keep on using both kernels.

I dont have a Linux box handy (well six beefy HP9000's makes up for a lot :) ), but if I remember correctly, you need to edit a file called .config in the kernel source (just incase make menuconfig doesnt offer modifying the version number) after make (x)menuconfig and before make bzImage. Grep around for 'VERSION'. Also, have a peek at /etc/modules.conf.

2. Is your ALSA version right for the kernel. Are you trying to use both the OSS and ALSA drivers at the same time. (Check startup scripts for insmod/modprobe, as well as /etc/modules.conf).

3. Perhaps the old kernel uses modules, and the new one doesnt use modules, nor supports the underlying module infrastructure. I dont know what happens when module autoloading is started by the init scripts, but its certanly not what you want. You can either hack the startup scripts, to start kmod depending on the kernel version, or try the FIX for 2 linuxes on on disk, below.

4. Get rid of ext3. This filesystem creates a thread called kjournald, and http://www.google.nl/search?num=30&h...f&q=kjournald+ has a lot of bad news about it. Switch to ReiserFS or ext2 . They are both faster. (ReiserFS is a journaling fs, so fscheck is faster than with ext2). Requires moving all you files to a newly created filesystem, so it may be quite involved.

FIX: for two linux instalations on one disk. This is reasonably advanced stuff, dont attempt it without thinking.

This fix involves smart partitioning of your disk. Make two partitions for the root filesystem, 8 to 16 MB is plenty. These should hold the following directories, with the proper contents:

/boot (for the kernel)
/etc (config files, allows different config for each kernel)
/lib (libraries and modules. Different for each kernel)

Lets name these partitions /dev/hda1 and /dev/hda2

You should also create some empty directories:
/home,
/root,
/tmp
/usr
/var

These are mount points. Next make partitions for each of the mount points, populate them, and add the right lines to /etc/fstab (BOTH of them)

Next, set the root filesystem for both kernels. If not using lilo or grub, use the rdev command to hard wire /dev/hda1 to one kernel and /dev/hda2 to the other. For lilo, use the root= setting in lilo.conf.

A problem ofcourse is keeping youre configuration in sync. Most configuration files can be shared between the instalations. Some intelligent symlinking should do the trick.