I followed the kernal compiling tutorial on this site up until it asked me to copy System.map and bzImage to the boot folder. The terminal returned an error that said the two files couldn't be found in the kernal file (linux-2.6.10.tar.bz2). And sure enough, when I went in and looked for myself, the two files weren't in the places where the tutorial said they should be. I also did a search of the whole file, but still found nothing. I'm not sure if these files have a new name in later versions or what, but any help would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
shimano55

hi there

did u look for vmlinux in the
/usr/src/linux-2.6..../arch/i386/boot directory

I doubt you followed the tutorial step-by-step. If you did, you'd know that you don't have to look for that files inside the tar.bz2 file. The System.map and bzImage are created during the compiling and are located in the directory where the compile took place. If,for example, you compiled in /dir, they'd be found in /dir/System.map and /dir/arch/i386/boot/bzImage respectively.
I suggest you take another (good) look at the tutorial.
And one more thing: it's called kernel not kernal.
It's not necessary to compile in /usr/src.

i know that it is not necessary to compile there
but i was refering to the directorry following the convention

I made that comment only to avoid any sort of confusion. I remember when I compiled my first kernel that everything was quite confusing...some tutorials said to compile in /usr/src, others in /home/whatever and other ones even skipped the untarring part so you had to figure out by yourself what the author ment.

Thanks for spelling error. I know its spelled Kernel, I just have some slips sometimes .

I suppose that the command to compile would be make bzImage? And no, I didn't go that far before looking in the file. Thanks for this information.

I have chosen to compile it in /usr/src/ just becuase that is where the old kernel files were placed. Should make everything a bit less confusing.

My last question is regarding the tutorial I am following located at "LinuxQuestions.org > Forums > Linux - General > Newbie Guide To Compiling A Kernel!". It tells me to run:
My question is, are all of these necessary? When I run them they all seem to do that same thing.

Thanks in advance,
shimano55

yes all of these are necessary

make bzImage
will make the kernel image

make module
makes the modules

make modules_install
will install the modules to /lib/modules

regards

Like masand said, all of them are necessary, maybe even an extra step.
If you don't compile as built-in (as opposed to modules), ext2, ext3 or whatever filesystem describes the partition your kernel is on and also SCSI/IDE support you have to create an initial ram disk (a.k.a. initrd). And the extra step mentioned above would be: 'mkinitrd -o /boot/initrd.img-version version', where version is, of course, the version of the kernel, such as 2.6.10. This step should come last, after 'make modules_install' and its syntax may vary.

And I'll add one minor thing to what masand said regarding 'make modules_install': the modules will be installed in /lib/modules/version (see version from above).

Something tells me you shouldn't be compiling your own kernel. No offense, but even after 6 years of linux experience, I sometimes forget what I need to compile support for into the kernel and which modules I need to build. If you're new to this you're not even going to know what half the kernel options are for.
But good luck...

Trust me..if i didnt have to be doing this, I wouldn't be. But its the only way to install ndiswrapper and get my wireless network card working. This deal of switching from Windows to Linux and back again is getting rather annoying. Therefore I need to get internet working computer wide.

Thanks for all the help guys.