If so, could you go through the steps that you used in compiling it. Maybe I'm just an idiot, but I have followed the directions of several web pages and have yet to end up with a working kernel. I don't get any errors during compilation, I just get a kernel panic when I try to boot the new kernel. I may be screwing something up in the config when it comes to the file system settings. I see when it tries to boot that it can't mount the file system.

JC

BTW, my distro is Suse 8.1 pro.

the information in the kernel howto should contain all you need (and the fact that it's 2.4.20 won't affect a thing) you're presumably just not choosing correct values. the best way to learn is often to use an existing configuration from your distribution (often stored in /boot/config-2.4.20 or similar) and then personalise it only a little.

I am on my 10th compile. All my attempts so far result in kernel panic.

I think I will revert to 2.4.19

I feel your pain. I am on my 4th compile I believe.

JC

yeah, slack 9 (rc3) and kernel 2.4.20.
I ran 2.4.20 in slack 8.1 too. I have had no problems with it.

Are you using a ram disk?
Which file system can't it mount?

HC

Here's what my screen looks like when the system freezes up :
***************************************************************

RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0
Freeing initrd memory: 246K freed
VFS: Mounted root(ext2 filesystem).
Loading module reiserfs . . .
insmod: reiserfs: no module by that name found
Loading module ide-scsi . . .
insmod: ide-scsi: no module by that name found
kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 16:02

****************************************************************


JC

ehm....I'm no guru meself but why don't you try compiling reiserfs support and ide-scsi support into the kernel.

Do you use reiserfs at all? If you don't you can leave it out of course.

HC

If your root partition is reiser you need to compile it into the kernel or make a initrd.

Ok, thanks. I did initially compile reiser into the kernel, and I got that kernel to boot. But then I got an error during boot that said something about too many mounted file systems (or something like that, I can't be sure). So I thought to try reiser as a module as the default config had it that way. But it seems obvious as to why that won't work. The kernel can't load modules if it can't load itself (or that's what my thoughts are and they could very well be wrong).

What are the neccesities as far as File System config if I am using reiser and fat 32 partitions ?

JC

Reiserfs and vfat (also fat but that is only for old DOS file systems)
Win95 or newer uses vfat I believe.

HC

I like to compile filesystem types support into the kernel rather than as modules.

In your /etc/fstab file, you should use the notail option for your boot partition if you chose to create a ReiserFS filesystem on it. If you only created / as ReiserFS, your /boot is part of /.

I make a separate ext3 filesystem /boot partition as it is considered more mature than ReiserFS.