dist: slackware9.0
$pwd
/usr/src/linux-2.4.20
$cp /boot/config /usr/src/linux-2.4.20/.config
$make clean
$make xconfig
(here I change processor family to athlon to
accomidate th athlon 1.4 GHz Thunderbird)
$make dep
$make bzImage

after copying the new image to /boot , doing the
necessary file switching with mv and editing /etc/lilo.conf
I run lilo which exits with an error that the image is too
large to be used.
I have searched the web in general and the LDP homepage
yet no kernel tutorials seem to get between the basic five-step
process and the kernel internals.
However, I would like to understand the configuration process
in more depth as I would also like to know
why modifying one variable results in a kernel too large
to fit in the available space of the MBR.
any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
Cicisbeo
cicisbeo@gis.net
7/25/2003

well by default i don't think that it is the *same* config as the default kernel, that's probably just the default source. so you'd need to customize it properly.

and you did actully copy the correct (compressed) image from the boot directory?

yes, but that was confusing too because it appeared in the
arch/i386/boot
dir
there doesn't seem to be an arch/athlon nor arch/i586 ..i686
~cicisbeo

it is i386 i.e. intel compliant architecture, as oppose to sparc or something totally different

Thanks for your help Chris.
I wonder if you might know this; I meant to ask you in my last post:
You'd said the actual kernel config file was not /boot/config as I erroneously
assumed. Does it exist as a file then? Does some utility which I am
ignorant to exist with which to query the loaded kernel and cat it's config?
~cicisbeo