1) Move the linux-2.4.20 directory to /usr/src with 'cp -r linux-2.4.20 /usr/src/'
2) Change to /usr/src/ with 'cd /usr/src',
3) Link linuz-2.4.20 to linux with 'ln -s linux-2.4.20 linux'
4) Change to linux with 'cd linux'
5) Print out the guide.
6) Follow the steps in the guide.

Thanks Aussie!

Quick responding too, this forum is great.

Maybe I come back later with more stupid questions

I have a permanent net connection, and email gets checked every 15min, but I'm about to call it a night, so you might not get an answer untill the morning :-)

It says starting up X11 session manager then the screen flashes 3 times and gives the error message.

I cannot start the X server (your graphical interface) It is likely that it is not set up correctly. Would you like to view the X server output to diagnose the problem?

Can't do anything here because my keyboard doesn't work.

I was using gdm.

Do you mean actually get my computer running or just get to the root login with the install disk? Yes my bios supports booting from cd. If I just pressed enter at the slackware load screen I could login as root and mount my partition. I'm not entirely sure what you were asking.

Edit your /etc/inittab and change the default runlevel to 3.

That gets me to the login prompt, but doesn't help the fact that my keyboard won't work.

Great post! I copied and pasted it into gedit and saved it for future reference.

I'm not a newbie to Linux but I'm a newbie to Slackware and your post is VERY much appreciated!

Thanks!
Chad

That's exactly why I was asking that, lol. I was going to suggest that, and then was going to say what Aussie said, but he beat me to it.

Sorry I didn't respond back sooner, was doing an overhaul of this system over night (my time), and was concentrating because I was doing some partition playing and didn't want to mess anything up.

As far as the keyboard goes, if you've checked your keyboard connection, LEDs come on, wiggling the cord while typing to see if it's a short, at least that would eliminate the possibilty of hardware failure.

Other than hardware-wise, I've never had a problem with a keyboard software-wise, or if I did, I certainly don't remember it. I'm taking it, you've had this keyboard working before, correct? And let me re-iterate just for a sec, according to your /etc/lilo.conf, you have a windoze partition, possibly a running windoze installation, does the keyboard work there? Or on other systems?

Let me know.

I'm replying using this very keyboard, and the keyboard worked before I tried recompiling my kernel. My keyboard works fine when I boot up windows. Thanks for consistantly replying to me.

Quick question reply...

Desktop or laptop?

USB keyboard or ATX(aka PS/2) keyboard?
(if you're on a laptop, using the built-in keyboard, it's most likely the latter)

Have you tried booting up with the CD, hitting just enter at the prompt, mounting the drive, and changing /etc/inittab as suggested before? (this would help things a lot)

-TheDot

Desktop.

ps/2 keyboard.

Yes... and it boots up to the login screen now.

first i dind't fnd the dir linux under /usr/src
secondly where shall i run make
under which directory?
sorry if they r silly but i am newbie

And this is where it all ends, right? No logging in, no nothing, not even keys that cause LEDs to light up (Num Lock, Caps Lock) don't work, right?

Then, I have a couple things you can try, first off, boot up with the "working" kernel from the menu, if you can, and skip the next sentence. If not, just boot up the same way you did to edit /etc/inittab, but this time, run 'chroot /<mounted dir>' (obviously replacing the latter part with your directory you mounted the drive on [also, this will make running lilo much easier]).

Either way you boot up, edit your /etc/lilo.conf to match below, and then run lilo -v when you're done:
The append="kbd-reset" line may just do the trick to getting your keyboard to work with the new kernel. I haven't been able to dig up any info as of yet on it, but found that merely by accident while looking at /usr/src/linux/Documentation/kernel-param.txt (I think that's the file name) for something for my system.

If this doesn't do it, re-boot with whichever way you got it working, chroot if you have to mount, and go through the process of recompiling your kernel, and this time... read the help stuff for whatever you're unsure about, but might have caused the keyboard malfunction. Even if you have to mount and chroot, recompiling should go ok. You may want to gzip /boot/vmlinuz.old before compiling (since this is the working one), and put it somewhere safe, like maybe on a seperate floppy.

I hope this finally fixes stuff up. Once you got everything back up and running, with recompiling, and all, then you can worry about changing /etc/inittab back to using gdm (you may even want to try kdm after everything's working again - it's pretty nice ).

BTW, I grew up in Chi-town, and had friends in Rockford.

Taken from http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Kernel-HOWTO/quick_steps.html
What do I change extraversion to?
EXTRAVERSION = what do I put here?

That's for if you're doing a patch or step upgrade, like going (as for example only: ) from 2.4.20 to 2.4.20.95

The 95 is what you would put if you were doing that.

Like:
VERSION = 2
PATCHLEVEL = 4
SUBLEVEL = 20
EXTRAVERSION = 95

If you're just recompiling the same kernel, don't put anything there.

Hope that helps.