Hi, I have RHAS4, kernel 2.6.9
I upgraded its kernel to 2.6.18 (latest) since intel drives works only with kernel 2.6.13+.

I am having these errors while booting new kernel...

Uncompressing Linux... Ok, booting the kernel.
ide0: I/O resource 0x1F0-0x1F7 not free.
ide0: ports already in use, skipping probe
Red Hat nash version 4.1.18.1 starting
mkrootdev: label / not found
mount: error 6 mounting ext3
mount: error 2 mounting none
switchroot: mount failed: 22
umount /initrd/dev failed: 2
Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!

First it used to be mount: error 2 mounting ext3, which means kernel is not able to find right volume to mount root. then I gave drive path in grub.conf

title Red Hat AS (2.6.18)
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18 ro root=/dev/hda1=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.18

while installing new kernel i did ..

make menuconfig (for new kernel's .config)
make bzImage
make modules
make modules_install
mkinitrd (for new initd)

kernel is complied with ext3 inbuilt support.
its ATA disk, toshiba M115 laptop. and I cant use anyother linux apart from AS/ES as its application's requirment.

I have to do all this for making my wireless and others drivers to work. I have correct 3945ABG drives and firmware, but with old kernel its giving various errors (may be its just becouse kernel old than what drivers are made for).

Any ideas?
ide0: I/O resource 0x1F0-0x1F7 not free.
ide0: ports already in use, skipping probe
I am sure its all depending on this error, if solved will work OK.

Thanks in advance

You built the kernel wrong in the first place, you also forgot to configure the kernel in 'make menuconfig' correctly, the default config file does not build a good working kernel for Red Hat (or many other distros). You really need to spend time and build a working configuration.

As a suggestion download extract prep and use your current kernel RH kernel config file found in /boot as a side by side guide to build a working vanilla 2.6.18 vanilla kernel. The changes the RH makes to their supplied kernels makes the config files for the RH supplied kernels not 100% compatible for the vanilla source.

The proper commands in order to build a kernel for red hat based systems are;

make mrproper (or make clean after the first time)
make menuconfig (or gconfig or xconfig depending on your system)
make
make modules_install
make install

See it does work when you have a working configuration.
$ uname -a
Linux Aspire5000 2.6.19-rc4 #1 Tue Oct 31 08:36:37 EST 2006 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
$ cat /etc/*release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES release 4 (Nahant Update 4)


Now to get your ipw3945 issue resolved, you really do not need to build a new kernel for example;

https://www.scientificlinux.org/

ftp://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/...6/RPMS/ipw3945
ftp://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/...4/RPMS/ipw3945
ftp://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/.../SRPMS/ipw3945

.