Here is my complete newbie guide to building a kernel in slackware taken from all the other compile guides I found on this site and cleaned them up:
*Either logon to root into your gui or use the su command because you need root access.
1. First go and download the kernel source at kernel.org and download what you wish mine was linux-2.6.11.5.tar.bz2.A good directory is /usr/src
2. Change into the directory by cd /usr/src. Now you need to extract the file so we will do tar -xjvf linux-2.6.11.5.tar.bz2. This will create a directory named linux-2.6.11.5/
3. change directories into linux-2.6.11.5 now by doing cd linux-2.6.11.5/ and now we are ready for the fun part:
NOTE: if you want to use your existing config file do this now or otherwise skip this. We need to copy the old config file in the /boot directory. So type cp /boot/config-ide-2.4.29 .config. (your config file name could differ)
Here is a list of ways to pick the kernel options the way some do it which is inside the console and don't need a gui running so you can do it straight from the shell is:
make menuconfig (uses the .config file)
Here are a few other options which provide graphical way of doing it:
make gconfig
make xconfig (I like this option better)
NOTE: Circles are modules and check marks are built into the kernel, you don't want stuff like your filesystem as a module or you will need to do an extra step which is not covered here.
NOTE: lspci -v or cat /proc/pci cat /proc/cpuinfo will help identify your hardware.
I can't really help you much more with this part but all I have to say is research your equipment and know what is in your computer, make sure you have some basic support for your kernel like:
filesystem (ext2, ext3)
usb support for keyboard and mouse (like OHCI)
framebuffer support for graphics card
After you are done with your selections save and close the window out or hit exit in menuconfig.
make bzImage (builds the kernel)
make
make modules_install (installs the modules)
NOTE: On a 1.6Ghz computer with 512mb of ram it took 10-15 minutes for make bzImage to finish, on slower computers this could take a while.
UPDATE: ALTERNATIVE STEP (UNTESTED)
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...13#post1552913
after following the above link run make install and it should do step 4 for you. Please tell me if this worked.
NOTE: You can skip step 4 if you followed this.
4. Now we need to move our files into the /boot directory to be used.
cp /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.11.5
cp System.map /boot/System.map-2.6.11.5
cp .config /boot/config-2.6.11.5
5. Now that we have all of this setup we need to tell lilo to boot our new kernel. open your favorite text editor and load /etc/lilo.conf. heres what it should look like (yours is going to be a bit different, but this should work on a default 10.1 install)
image="/boot/vmlinuz-ide-2.4.29"
root="/dev/hda2"
label="Slack-2.4.29"
read-only
Copy this and paste it right below we are going add the new kernel and it should look like this:
image="/boot/vmlinuz-ide-2.4.29"
root="/dev/hda2"
label="Slack-2.4.29"
read-only
image="/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.11.5"
root="/dev/hda2"
label="Slack-2.6.11.5"
read-only
Make sure image= points to your bzImage you compiled in the /boot directory
Make sure root= points to your harddrive partition
Make sure label= anything you want without spaces, this is how it will appear in the menu selection on lilo menu
Add read-only at the end.
6. Save and exit lilo.conf and then run lilo and it shouldn't display any errors.
7. Reboot and hope for the best!
Thank you everybody here for helping me out with this!