Before i Start i would like to ask you to bare with me for today is the first time that i have installed or even looked at a system that run any flavor of linux.

I have 2 pre-configured kernels that may not support red hat 7.3 but i have to make one of the work with it. I have added both of these kernel to lilo boot and when i boot with either one i get the same results. A bunch of jiberish .. from what i can gather is the hdd drive is some how wrong in these new kernals or I have noticed that in the lilo.conf file they call a .img file and the 2 versions that i have do not have a .img file at all.

They both have 3 files associated with them
What i think is the kernel is -- "etlinux-2.4.5"
Then there is a -- "System.map-2.4.5"
Which I copied both of these to the the /boot folder
And finally there is a file call "config"
Which i don't do anything with not sure if i need To.

Here is what my Lilo.conf looks like

prompt
timeout=50
default=linux
boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
message=/boot/message
linear

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-3 This one Works
label=linux
initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.18-3.img
read-only
root=/dev/hda5
image=/boot/etlinux-2.4.5 This does not work
label=BWMKernal
read-only
root=/dev/hda5
image=/boot/etlinux-2.4.17 This does not work
label=BWMKernalOlder
read-only
root=/dev/hda5



and here is 1 of the error messages of the many i get on boot up

Checkinf for new hardware/etc/rc5.d/S05kudzu: /usr/sbin/kudzu: No suck file or directory
[Failed]

Starting system logger:


This is where i am at.
Thank you
Sorry to be long winded but i dont know how else to explain all of this.
Thanks Again

extensions don't matter in linux. they could be called foo.bar.fred.joe. doen't matter. Linux is no different that Unix when it comes to file exensiions, there are suggestions and habbits people use, but beyond that, it doesn't matter.


so wait. let me understand exactly what is going on here. "may not support redhat 7.3" doesn't really tell me anything...

you are using etlinux, which is an embeded Linux distro.

you load the kernel, it boots and drops you to a command line...somewhere in this there are all sorts of errors with your rc files loading (the kuzu message, btw you couldn't have picked a much more random and useless error message to copy ). After all those error messages you see something like

Login:

and you login and start typing away at the keyboard....either that or you set it up to boot to X, in which case there are probably more errors.


What is more than likely happening here, is the precompiled kernels don't support some part of your system, be it file systems, sound cards, etc..

If you asked me where to put my money, I would say: "You clicked through the Redhat 7.3 install. Redhat used the filesystem ext3. The new kernels you are tying out don't support ext3, which so happens to be supposedly backwards compatible with ext2, but it really breaks stuff."

Now, I read through etlinux's website, and maybe you can explain to me, Why are you changing the kernels? in preperation of the "host" system, all you need to do supposedly is:
http://www.etlinux.org/documents.html#1.2

While I'm working with embedded XP right now (at a slave's wage), I haven't delt with Embedded Linux...What is it that you are trying to do exactly, I think you might be walking down the wrong path for some reason.

You are probably right. ( I may be rolling down a hill that never stops). Just a few things .. the reason that i am prusing this at all because i am trying to test out some software that will run on linux red hat or freebsd and the kernel that comes with red hat is modified to the point that it is not generic enought for this software ( so i am told ) [http://www.etinc.com its Bandwidth Management Software] Also this is the kernal that they told me to use with redhat linux 7.1 which i am now in the process of trying to find since 7.3 is not working with it.
As far as the errors in my previous post. That was the last one on the list and i never do get to the login line becasue it give me the stating system logger and stops right there. So i am unable to contiune one. Am am going to be in the process of trying freebsd and redhat 7.1 and see if i have better results am leaving the redhat 7.3 up because would like to use it if i can get it to work. And if it would have to do with the hard drives with ext2 and ext3 backward compatible ... not sure what all that means But would i be able to do anything to fix this?


Thank You Very Much For Your Reply

the red hat kernel is more the othere way around, that is, its too generic and doesn't have support for their (propertitary) code, which makes sense as they're charging you for something that does little more than the built in QoS stuff in the kernel, AFAIK.

http://www.etinc.com/bwman_v321.htm#linux_kernel

that might be your solution, I realize that building a custom kernel may be going too far for this project

as for my guess on the ext3 ext2 issue, it could be there. since you can't boot to the commandline... well an easy way to tell would be reboot to LILO, hit ctrl-X to get out of that stupid gui and type

BWMKernal init=/bin/bash

once that boots up, type
mount

that will show you what filesystem each is mounted as...should be ext3 for /

anyhow, late again for work, gotta run