I am now in the midst of compiling a new kernel
that supports apci and also to disable the
apm option

In make menuconfig, it was shown that the
"Advanced Power Management Bios Support" option
with an asterisk and ACPI without an asterisk
which is correct.

BUT in make xconfig, in the "Advanced Power Management Bios Support" option it was shown as a "n" ?! Shouldn't it be
a "y" ? And I could not enable the ACPI support option
here unlike in menuconfig ....

I am pretty sure I am missing something here,
could some one enlighten me ?

I am running Red Hat 8 by the way with kernel version
2.4.18-14.

Thanks in advance !

I have never used menuconfig, I would guess if there's a * next to something there, it is enabled. make xconfig is much more well defined I think.. is there a particular reason you want to use menuconfig ?

When in doubt, I'd open up the .config file and see if the option I'm concerned about has a 'y'/'n' next to it.

From the hint given by nxny, I found that .config file holds the
kernel settings values. I did more research and now can
enable the ACPI in make xconfig by copying the config file
from /usr/src/linux-2.4/configs.

These are the steps I have done:

1) Copy the kernel-2.4.18-athlon.config from /usr/src/linux-2.4/configs
to /usr/src/linux-2.4/.config
2) Edit the Makefile and change the line that has EXTRAVERSION = -14custom to EXTRAVERSIOn = -14acpi
3) make oldconfig
4) make xconfig
5) Enable the ACPI options. Disable the APM options
5) Save and exit
6) make dep clean
7) make bzImage modules

At stage 7 it stops, I am not sure whether it is at bzImage stage
or modules stage. But the last two lines were
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-2.4.18-14/driver`
make: ***[_mod_drivers} Error 2

I am attempting to compile this kernel with ACPI support for my
Compaq Presario 725 notebook by the way ....

I am not sure if the steps are correct, any one can comment on
the above steps ? Any advice given will be appreciated ! Thanks in advance.

What I do is use the RH config file as a base .config and then make xconfig to enable some disable some.

We'd need more than just the last 2 lines to see where the error occured. You need to go back to the point where make says.. oh I couldnt execute this step. From that point on, that error usually is carried through until make gets miffed and stops.