Ok here is the problem, I have tried and tried again to compile a new kernel for my linux machine and every time it does not work. I have read everything I can find online from man pages to tldp and with no avail.

My question is can I somehow see what my kernel now has compiled in and then somehow just take out the options I don't want in it (usb, sound, etc) and compile what I do want in, (smbfs, quotas, etc) I have the default kernel that comes with redhat 7.2, I am running straight command line with no extras, just the base install with gcc and all I need to install programs.

If I could start with what already works and then go from there it would work much better but when I am starting from scratch and have never done this before it is frustrating to have 200 questions asked that I don't really know the answer to most of them. I know how to edit lilo and add in the new kernel and I know the steps to compile the kernel I just don't know the options to set while doing the make config

Thanks.

All the options that you choose when you run 'make menuconfig' are strored in a file called '.config' in the /usr/src/linux-version (or whever Redhat put the kernel source) directory. When I download a new version of the kernel, I just copy the .config from the old directory to the new one, run 'make menuconfig' and then rebuild the kernel.

I'm not a Redhat user, but I think that they store the config file, for the kernel that they built, in the /boot directory. So, just copy the /boot/config-version to the /usr/src/linux-version directory and rename it as .config. Run make menuconfig, change the options that you want and that should be it.