Well i was hoping someone could shed a little light on a few things for me?

I have just successfully compiled my first kernel! well almost, it boots up and i can get into xwindows

My problem is I cant seem to get my modem to connect! I mean it dials up and all but then when it trys to authenticate it just drops the connection. (i think its at this stage anyway, its after it has dialed)

I am using RH 7.2 and RH PPP Dialer to dial up. my modem is connected to /dev/ttyS1 (i think thats com2 on my motherboard)
sorry if i got this wrong, just learning :P

I think the problem has to do with the options i chose in xconfig?
maybe some of the network options? or parrallel port?

the new kernel version is 2.4.19

Im so close to having all my problems solved! haha
I have finally got a reasonable hard drive transfer rate with this new kernel.

40.25 Mb/sec
which is much better than 6.xx which i was getting!

one more thing, I think this is just because i am quite new to linux, but with my new kernel, when i put a cd into my cdrom drive it doesnt automount? so i cant access it?

how would i activate automount? (is this done in some of the options in xconfig? )
or maybe i could mount it manually?

any help will be much appreciated!
one day soon i will be able to help new comers to linux!
with all the things i have learnt!

Well the only kernel-level problem would be if you hadn't enabled ppp support at all in the kernel. Did you?

In order to help you, should you post a few lines from the log file for others to see what's wrong.

mlp

Was everything working before you compiled the new kernel?

If not I would rerun pppsetup or whatever it is you use to set up a ppp connection. Also the following should probably be either compiled into the kernel or compiled as modules

ppp_deflate
ppp_async
ppp_generic
slhp

If you compiled the kernel with make xf86config, make dep, make clean, make bzImage did you remember to do a make modules and make modules_install?

You probably want to take a look at the Modem-HOWTO and PPP-HOWTO.

Luck

Cheers

I do remember selecting ppp in xconfig, but i will have another look
it just seems strange, im using the same RH ppp dialer now to connect, but with my old kernel 2.4.7-10

what log file would i have a look at or rather where would i find it?

i didnt do make modules and make modules_install

im not sure that i chose to install any extra modules

this may sound dumb but where do i find the modem-HOWTO and PPP-HOWTO

sorry i havent used linux very long

Don't know about RH, but in Slakware they are in /usr/doc/Linux-HOWTOs. There is also the Linux Documentation Project online which has all kinds of guides and Howtos.