LinuxQuestions.org - Compiling 2.6 Kernel for stock rh9

Hello all!

In my never-ending quest to take back control of my pc by switching to linux, I have been through quite a bit, and perhaps might not deserve the name *complete* newbie anymore...

As such, I bought all new hardware for my home machine recently (it all started with a geforce 5600 fx that refused to work past 2X AGP in my old mobo...). So, the quick synopsis of current hardware:

Abit NF7-S v2.0
AMD 3200+400 (Barton Core, obviously)
1gig pc3200 400mhz
WD Caviar 40gig HD
Maxtor 60gig HD

Now, I am dual booting XP/RH9 (though i dont really ever use XP, so it may be leaving soon...).

Stock RH9 install works fantastic, all my hardware works right away (nvidia drivers sailed smoothly and gave me audio/ethernet/video drivers no prob).
Only sticking point for me was that my HD would NOT go past UDMA2, and get detected as UDMA(33). trying to change settings with hdparm only yield errors in my logs that mode 3/4/5 speeds will not work.

I think i finally tracked this down to the cable bits being set incorrectly, and not being corrected by my stock install.

This is a vanilla RH9 install, with the stock kernel that came with the image, which was 2.4.20-8.

To try to fix this problem, and to keep up to date with things, I decided that since the stable 2.6.2 kernel was released, I would upgrade to it.

Here is where all my questions begin. I am really hoping that I may be able to find some help here (everyone has been so great in the past...) with the procedures and steps to upgrade from this stock 2.4.20-8 kernel to the 2.6.2

#1. With the AMD 3200+ 400, what processor type should I be picking in the kernel configuration? 6x86? Athlon/Duron?
I noticed these options in my .config file:

# CONFIG_MK6 is not set
CONFIG_MK7=y
# CONFIG_MK8 is not set

I had set the Athlon/Duron/etc. flag to yes in the configuration. Is the Barton core chip MK8? Any help here would be great!

#2. Does anyone have very specific instructions regarding this kernel upgrade for an NF7-S mobo/AMD chip combo? I have found quite a few different things on google, and they have all been helpful, but I want to be sure there is nothing silly I am missing.

For instance, there seems to be a huge change for modules in the new kernel. I thought I had upgraded all of the required utils in the Changes file included with the kernel, but I am still having a problem. NONE of my modules load automatically at bootup (and yes, the option is enabled in my config).
I got quite a few unresolved symbols during: make modules.
Then during boot I get a bunch of:
Feb 9 21:52:44 localhost iptables: modprobe: QM_MODULES: Function not implemented

I had upgraded to the latest module-init-tools, as had been suggested in many different how-to's, but this problem still persists
:scratch:

In the end, I do get a kernel that boots, and even loads into KDE with no problem, only thing is that I have NO modules loaded at bootup (boot modules included things like USB, and sound). Any help with this to iron out the problems would be greatly appreciated, and even better for any suggestions regarding kernel config stuff that perhaps I should know about.

It seems there is also some sort of problem with fs type devpts not being supported by kernel?

TIA everyone!