What goes "in" a kernel?
 

A long time ago, I built a Gentoo installation. I managed to get through the install docs, which were pretty obtuse at the time, and booted into my new distro. Yay.

'cept for one thing: I didn't have network access.

Somehow, even though the installer requires network access, when I booted into my machine, I had no access.

I theorized that the problem was I didn't build in support for my network card into the kernel.

So, this question...

Is the above true? Should I have built into the kernel support for my NIC? Is this required? What does it mean to build a kernel anyway?

Cheers,

Mike...

it means that you need to recompile the kernel with the drivers required for your devices to work

you can read this howto to have info about kernels
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Kernel-HOWTO.html

also this network install howto
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Network-Install-HOWTO.html

regards :)

Thanks. Just FYI, that Kernel HOWTO article has been removed, but on the page is a link to the new version.

I had read in the meantime, that one can have a small kernel and use modules to support various things... So, I suppose I could have done this, too.

I am reading the stuff now!!

m