I have a fresh install of Slackware 10. My Shuttle AN35N motherboard is nforce2 Ultra 400 based causing the well-known onboard ethernet and onboard sound problems. Rather than using the nVidia drivers with the default 2.4.26 kernel, I want to move to the 2.6.7 kernel included in /testing.

What steps do I take to move to this kernel (from the 2 distribution CDs)?

For Audio I plan to use ALSA (snd_intel8x0). For network I plan to use forcedeath.

Thanks

(with Linux 2.6.7 as an alternate choice in /testing).
the i8x0 module is probably included.
You can also take the sources here: http://kernel.org/

Patrick V made it easy - just go to /testing/packages/linux-2.6.7 and use pkgtool to install everything except the kernel-headers package, then reboot into the 2.6.7 kernel.

You probably won't need an initrd, but be sure to read the README.initrd file (also in the same directory) just in case you do.

Have fun!

Don't you still need to run lilo or is it done by the install script? (I am on 2.6.7 but I did it by hand.)

If I remember correctly, Patrick set it up with a symlink from vmlinuz pointing the new kernel, so that a LILO command isn't necessary. It should be ready to go after installing the testing packages.

It wouldn't be a bad idea though to check the /boot directory and make certain that vmlinuz is indeed pointing to 2.6.7 and that your lilo.conf file boots using vmlinuz as the kernel entry.

If it's not that way, make any necessary adjustments.

Cool, a couple more questions, if I may:

Why don't I install the kernel-headers package?

Regarding initrd: is it correct that initrd composes a very basic system for loading the kernel into? If so, I would only need a new one if 2.6.7 needs something different than 2.4.X?

Is there any chance of conflicts between 2.4.X kernel modules and 2.6.7 modules? Or does the install take care of this?

Thanks !

Regarding kernel headers, if you should decide to stick with the 2.4 kernel, the 2.6 headers could become problematic once installed. They can be added later, if needed.

The initrd image is used as an initial ramdisk to load scsi and/or ext3 filesystem support at system boot if they were compiled into the kernel as modules. Don't make/use one if you don't need it.

I've heard others say that conflicts did arise when they tried to maintain 2.4 and 2.6 kernels on the same installation and then tried to switch back and forth between the two.

Once you know the 2.6 kernel is working properly, you can delete all the 2.4 kernel files in the /boot directory and the 2.4 modules in /lib/modules/ if you wish, but take care when doing this so that you don't delete any important files.

Have fun, and let us know how it goes!

<Posting from lynx because X isn't working yet >

I was surprised when I got home tonight, that forcedeth was already loaded as a module. I had to rmmod/insmod it to get the eth to come up, but it seems to work now.

I'm going to work on sound now, if I get that to work with the 2.4 kernel, I'm defering going to 2.6.

Thanks for the help !

Kernel Headers: I remember reading somewhere that headers need to match not the kernel, but the libs and binaries which were compiled against those headers. How much truth is in it, I dont know.

There is almost not chance of 2.4 and 2.6 modules conflicting. They are in different dirs and have different extensions: 2.4 has .o, 2.6 has .ko.

There is only one point of conflict as I see it: System.map file. It holds a map of modules for a particular kernel. There doesn't seem to be a way to have one of many System.map files chosen at lilo.

Got everything working with 2.4.26:

sound: seems like ALSA was all setup, just needed to unmute and adjust volume with alsamixer

network: I noticed that the forcedeth kernel module was already loaded. After doing rmmod/insmod of the module seemed to fix

I also tried to install kernel 2.6.7 from /testing at disk 2 in slackware 10, but I got som problems. I use a SCSI-disk as my system disk, and I followed the instructions from README.initrd. It didn't work. The filesystem on my system disk is ext3. I don't know what to do. Can anyone help me?
This is my hardware(I will just write up the essential components):
P4C 3.0 GHz NW
Asus P4C800-E Deluxe
Adaptec 39160 SCSI-controller
ATI Radeon X800 Pro