Hi, this is all slightly confusing. I have the new 2.6 kernel test 4 and I am very keen to try it as it seems to support digital sound out on my motherboard. Anyhoo. I can follow the first part of the instructions in the docs very easily on how to compile a kernel. (2.6 is slightly different from 2.4x). But since I'm still pretty new to linux some of the other things that were said don't make much sense to me yet. What does 'making a symlink to point to your new kernel' mean - and how do I do that? Also, what does 'You have to make the /sys directory manually' mean? Do I just have to makedir /sys ? (That is sys would be located in / directory?) Is that all I have to do, or is there something else?

Sorry for these dumb n00b questions, but once I know I won't forget.

Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer.

Q

Making a symlink to your new kernel probably means to just create a softlink in /usr/src that points "linux" to the actual directory you extracted the kernel to...

Example:

ln -s /usr/src/kernel-2.6.test4 linux

Not sure about the /sys, I would assume if its asking you to create the directory manually, then yah, just:

mkdir sys

From within your / directory.

Yeah thanks... I think that's what it wants... Not much works without that 'linux' symlink in /usr/src. so I was kind of wondering how to create it.

While we're on the subject.... I followed the instructions in the docs to the best of my ability I downloaded and installed the sources as directed (in Gentoo it's easy, it's just emerge development-sources) and then ran the following:

Then:

As per the instructions for the 2.6 kernel on the main pages of kernel trap. But I hit a couple of snags. Well one major one really... When I did this all I got when I rebooted was a blank screen. Just grub and then nothing...

What am I doing wrong?

I definately edited grub to point to my new kernel and have triple checked it since then, but nothing... just an empty screen...

Any suggestions?

Q

PS

I don't know if it's relevant, but I used a script called genkernel to compile my original working kernel. Genkernel set up an initrd which scanned for new hardware whenever the system rebooted. However Genkernel is not compatable with kernel 2.6 yet, so I did it the old way by hand. The gentoo install instructions say if you do things manually, you shouldn't set up an intrd - so I simply commented out the intrd line in grub in order that it wouldn't be looked for during boot. Also Genkernel gave instructions to install hotplug, so I wonder if this might cuase problems too? Any suggestions anyone has would be extremely welcome.

Hi, when you mentioned 'blank screen' I remembered the doc: www.codemonkey.org.uk/post-halloween-2.5.txt

It has this to say about blank screens:

- Blank screen after decompressing kernel?
Make sure your .config has
CONFIG_INPUT=y, CONFIG_VT=y, CONFIG_VGA_CONSOLE=y and CONFIG_VT_CONSOLE=y
A lot of people have discovered that taking their .config from 2.4 and
running make oldconfig to pick up new options leads to problems, notably
with CONFIG_VT not being set.

hope that was the problem. Hotplug is discussed somewhat in http://thomer.com/linux/migrate-to-2.6.html and in http://www.fearthecow.net/index.pl?s...st&page=kernel aswell.

For RedHat9 users these
http://people.redhat.com/arjanv/2.5/RPMS.kernel/
rpms works beautyfully (I'm using them as I write).

Good luck!

Go to Slashdot.org and do a search for Kernel 2.6, there was a howto tutorial a week ago. I lost the link because of a total system reformat.