ok, i just downloaded the sources for kernel 2.4.21 and recompiled it for slackware9 by doing the following: make menuconfig, make dep, make clean, make bzImage, make, make install, make modules, make modules_install

i know i compiled for modules support and support for my AC 97 onboard sound card, but i don't have any sound and when i boot into slack using the new kernel first of all it doesn't use the cool vga=733 with the cool penguin at the top of my screen and when i startx, i get a message (just before the sound would usually play) that the device /dev/dsp doesn't exist (but it does) and i don't know if i even needed that device

also, when i go under /lib/modules/kernelversion, i barely see any modules and under the directory for my previous kernel's modules... any ideas?

Let's see if I can tackle this for ya:

/lib/modules/newkernel will have any modules you created during make menuconfig. If the module for your sound card isn't there, you likely left it out, or compiled it into the kernel. Since you are getting the /dev/dsp deal, I'm guessing you left it out

The FrameBuffer is what enables Tux at the top of the loading console. That is in the FrameBuffer section, and if you get a new enough kernel it even says "cool tux thingie" or something like that as the option

If kernelversion and newkernel are the same, you really wanna look at moving the old kernel modules to an 'old' file, like so:
mv /lib/modules/kernelversion /lib/modules/kernelversion.old
And then the new one won't overwrite the working/old one. That's only if they are of the same release (2.4.20 and 2.4.20).

You should have also copied over System.map from the bottom part of the kernel tree (assuming /usr/src was where you compiled it would be:
/usr/src/linux-2.4.21/System.map also assuming 2.4.21 ) to /boot I do that and copy it to something like:
cp /usr/src/linux-2.4.21/System.map /boot/System.map-2.4.21
And then make a Symlink so I don't overwrite the old one (that is also symlinked):
ln -sf /boot/System.map-2.4.21 /boot/System.map

HTH

Cool

ok, thx for the reply, i'll try that out and come back with the results

edit:

oh, and what should i put in for my "image =" in lilo.conf: the vmlinuz file or vmlinux... i copied the vmlinux from the one created during my kernel recompile to /boot and tried using that in lilo, but i wasn't able to do so because i got an error saying that the image is too large (it was 3.1 megs, but still larger than some other vmlinuxes in /boot that also rounded to 3.1 megs)

what is the difference between those two? and is there really a limit as to how large a kernel can be?

Use the bzImage in: arch/i386/boot of the kernel tree. Then point lilo:
image = /boot/bzImage-2.4.21
Assuming of course you copied it as described above.



Cool