Okay, I know this is an old distro, but my college uses it, and I'm doing something out of curiosity on a VMware machine.

I'm trying to compile a 2.4.32 kernel, and replace the current 2.4.18-1 kernel. I followed the steps on this webpage: http://www.digitalhermit.com/linux/K...ild-HOWTO.html

I did not make an initial ramdisk image. From what I understand, the ramdisk image is only necessary if you do not have the main boot disk drive support compiled into your kernel. I compiled scsi support into my kernel. (Though, I have also tried it using an initial ramdisk, and I'll get the problem I'm about to show you)

The problem is, when I boot up the new kernel, I get a kernel panic message. Here is the bottom 5 lines of the screen (everything prior looked normal)

ds: no socket drivers loaded!
kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k block-major-8, errno = 2
VFS: Cannot open root device "805" or 08:05
Please append a correct "root=" boot option
Kernel panic: VFS: unable to mount root fs on 08:05

Because this VMware is running under Windows XP, could it have something to do with the fact that Windows XP doesn't support the current VMware BusLogic scsi driver? If so, why does the older kernel 2.4.18-1 still load normally?

It looks like you are running into the "chicken and egg" problem as described in http://www.digitalhermit.com/linux/K...ild-HOWTO.html and that initrd was supposed to solve. You might want to try putting in initrd and see if that solves your problem.

Interesting. I'll check if the filesystem is compiled into the kernel; I'll also make an initrd image. One more question though. I noticed with I had to use mkinitrd, I had to have BusLogic.o nearby. However, this didn't always show up in my filesystem. Is this file created during the make dep step depending on whether or not I have enabled kernel support?

I'm not certain about the answer to your last question but have tagged your post so that it can attract the attention of someone who does know the answer.