Hi everybody,

Iam new to linux.Iam using redhat linux9.I have downloaded linux 2.6.15 version from ftp://ftp.cs.helsinki.fi/ and tried to compile it on my system.I dont have source code on my system originally.I copied the source code into /usr/src/linux dir.
Then linux as the top level directory i tried to compile the source code.I have generated .config file using the command
$make config

I said y(yes) to almost all it asked.
After that i tried to compile it using the command
$make -j2 bzImage
The output was like this
********************************************
CHK include/linux/version.h
SPILT include/linux/autoconf.n->include/config/*

HOSTCC scripts/genksyms/genksyms.o
.
.
.
.
.
.

HOSTCC scripts/mod/sumversion.o
HOSTLD scripts/mod/modpost
CHK usr/initramfs_list

/usr/src/linux/scripts/gen_initramfs_list.sh:
cannot open 'y'

make[1]: ***[usr/initramfs_list] error 1
make: ***[usr]*** error 2
make: *** waiting for unfinished jobs

CC init/main.o
CHK include/linux/compile.h
cc init/do_mounts.0
.
.
.
.
ld init/mounts.o
ld built_in.o

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

I cannot understand why the error is coming.In my /usr directory only one directory i.e linux is there which i have copied there.Earlier it was empty.Somebody helpme....

with regards
Ramakrishna sura

Well to start with installing a 2.6 kernel on RHL9 is not easy. You need to do some additional prep work before hand. Here's an old guide on how to do this; http://thomer.com/linux/migrate-to-2.6.html Good Luck!!

FYI: RHL9 is old and is not supported by Red Hat any longer, support ended the end of April 2004. Consider updating to something that is supported, staying in the Red Hat family may I suggest Fedora Core 4 or CentOS;

http://fedora.redhat.com/
http://www.centos.org/

Building 2.6 kernels is a bit different also, with Red Hat based systems the process is;

make mrproper
make oldconfig (since your going from 2.4 to 2.6)
make xconfig (or menuconfig or gconfig here)
make (get used to doing this)
make modules_install
make install

And please review;
http://www.digitalhermit.com/linux/K...ild-HOWTO.html

There you go - it seems you were being overzealous with your 'y' pressing (did you lean on the key by any chance? ). My guess is that you accidentally answered 'y' to an option that asked you a "what kind of.../where is..." question. In any event, it's trying to open something called 'y', so you've definitely misconfigured the kernel.

If the standard 'make config' takes too long for your liking, you can try 'make menuconfig' (requires the ncurses library) or 'make xconfig' (requires x to be running) which both give you a tree structure that you can traverse at will and select options from sensible groups. It's worth taking the time to install ncurses just so you can use menuconfig - having used that, I could never go back to using the standard 'make config' again except for emergencies...