Hey all, I know this is a really odd request but it has to be done because of the requirements for a project at my job. Basically I have an FC1 installation that I need to retrofit a 2.6 kernel onto. The actual compile/installation of the kernel to a running system was easy. Now attempting to get that kernel onto a bootable cd using ISOLINUX not so much. Here is my story:

First I attempted to move my kernel and the initrd from the system where I compiled it into the ISO that I created for the boot cd. Since it was a 2.6 kernel I had to modify the images/stage2.img and initrd.img file to have their .buildstamp files modified (so they would know what installation they were looking for). However on boot, after going through the isolinux menu that kernel simply crashes after "uncompressing linux. Ok booting the Kernel" I thought it might have been the initrd but I removed that from the equation by not pointing to it in the isolinux.cfg file. I used an initrd from both the 2.4 box and the 2.6 box (both using mkinitrd to create it).

Next I took the kernel from the first FC6 cd and attempted to boot. I was able to boot past the "uncompressing linux" point but then it crashed attempting to load /sbin/loader.

Third I modified the initrd to include the loader file from the 2.6 initrd. That got me past the last point but now it stating that I do not have enough memory to install the OS.

All of the above I have done before as well as using the 2.6 kernel/initrd and modifying the stage2.img to use some of the 2.4 and 2.6 files but it ended up turning into a maze of dependencies. I guess my first question is why can I not boot my compiled kernel off of the CD and secondly anyone have an idea as to why I get those out of memory errors? Any help would be GREATLY appreciated and I swear to offer help/sacrifices to the linux gods when needed

You seem to going about this the hard way. You seem to forgotten some important information like the system specs on this new system your attempting to install FC1 with a 2.6 kernel.

Backup a bit and think of why you cannot simply use mkbootdisk to create the bootable CD image;

mkbootdisk --iso --device boot.iso `uname -r`

You can use this ISO image via loopback for what you are attempting to do or simply boot with this image burned to a CD, for example;

$ uname -r
2.6.21-rc6

# mount -t iso9660 boot.iso /mnt -o loop

# ls -al /mnt/isolinux
total 3034
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 2048 Apr 11 11:14 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 2048 Apr 11 11:14 ..
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 2048 Apr 11 11:14 boot.cat
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 221 Apr 11 11:14 boot.msg
-rw------- 1 root root 1491935 Apr 7 13:14 initrd.img
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 10648 Apr 11 11:14 isolinux.bin
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 130 Apr 11 11:14 isolinux.cfg
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 1329 Apr 11 11:14 TRANS.TBL
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1595184 Apr 7 13:14 vmlinuz


It also seems that you may have not created (and may need) this new kernel as an rpm file for installation, go back to where you build the kernel and as do; make rpm

The memory requirements issue is something else, since you have not stated the amount memory is on the system your attempting to install on a safe 'rule of thumb' would be 128MB of RAM for a text installation and 256MB of RAM for a GUI installation at least.

I did leave out some details, I should have mentioned that this is a 1u server box with 1GB of RAM, P4 2.something, bunch of HD space and a CDROM.
I have attempted to use mkbootdisk with the same issue, starts and crashes. It's odd that if I use an kernel that came from an RPM it works fine though. Oh and speaking of RPMs ya I will need to compile this as an RPM but I figured that would come later as I created an RPM of this a while back but since I can't seem to even get the CD to boot and I have to keep compiling I figured why bother keep making RPMs.
There seems to be something that I either forgot to compile into the kernel or that I'm just missing. The kernel that comes with the 2.6.19 RPM that I have for FC6 works fine, if I use that config file to try to compile the kernel and add SATA support it still craps out. Any details I forgot to mention? I'm a bit brain fried at this point

Go back to where you got the 2.6.19 kernel from and get the kernel source rpm file and itstall it. Prep the kernel source and when ready build the kernel after making sure that sata support for the server hardware is built into the kernel and not as modules. It might be a good idea to build a monolithic kernel instead of a modular kernel for booting in this case.

The standard default kernel rpm file should be OK for installation, the kernel modules are present in this case. Where they are not available on the CD you been attempting to make.

Have you considered making a live and installable CD image instead, for example;

http://linux.web.psi.ch/livecd/

P.S. take a break and get some sleep.