first kernel compile
 

Hey everyone, well I have been using linux for a little more than a year now and the other day I decided to compile my first kernel (2.6). I chose to do this on my newly installed gentoo machine. I have done most of the configuring, although I am sure I left out support for something I need ha ha. However, I am still a little bit confused on the symlinks for the kernel and that stuff. I use grub and am a little confused on how I can install the new kernel, but make it so that if something is wrong grub can boot into the old 2.4 kernel. If anyone has any suggestions or can shed some light on how the symlinks work and what I need to do to get both kernels bootable it would be appreciated. Thanks

Give each kernel image a different name, and add an entry to grub for the second kernel. How are you going to go about compiling?

Well, I have yet to compile because I want to make sure I understand everything that I am doing. I was using a FAQ from kernelnewbies.org. I have done make menuconfig and did all of that. I was planning on doing the make bzimage next, then installing the modules. I guess after that is kinda where I am lost on what to do. Here is a list of the things I have done thus far:

put 2.6 source into /usr/src and untarred, etc.
then cd in to 2.6 dir and make menuconfig

Is this all right so far?? Thanks for the help

When you get to the step of copying the kernel image file and the system.map, make sure you don't overwrite your old stuff. Give the new stuff a different name.

Did you look at these?
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...threadid=91503
For 2.6:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=127095

I think I saw the 2.6 earlier, but I will look at it in more detail in a little bit. I have to go right now, but I will post later with some updates. Thanks again

Read the changes.txt in the documentation folder and make sure everything is at least what it requires. Note also that these are the minimum, for extra stuff like sound, you may have to update ALSA if migrating to 2.6.x

Also make sure you have module-init-tools installed for the version of depmod!!!

I have one more question. How do I make the correct symbolic links, etc so that I can configure grub to have both the 2.4 and 2.6 kernel available to boot from? I know there should be an easy way to do this in grub.conf, but I have no clue what to do. Any suggestions?

Why do you need symbolic links? You can specify several kernels for grub without them:
#kernel 1 (it may look slighlty different in your file) <<<
title Kernel 1
kernel (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda1
initrd (hd0,0)/boot/initrd.img
#end kernel 1 <<<
#kernel 2 <<<
title Kernel 2
kernel (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinuz2 root=/dev/hda1
initrd (hd0,0)/boot/initrd2.img
#end kernel 2 <<<

As you can see, just by adding a paragraph to your /etc/grub.conf, you can add another kernel to your boot menu.
Symbolic links are links to other files. You make them with 'ln -s [file] [newlink]'