while compilinh kernel 2.4.22 when di=oing mkinitrd i get following error...
cant create temp directory ...exiting
can any1 help....

OK, this may sound stupid but whats mkinitrd? I have re-built my kernel countless times, but I've never done that. I would do the following:

make mrproper
make menuconfig
make dep
make bzImage
make modules
su
[Password]
make modules install
cp arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/kernelname
cp System.map /boot
lilo

If mkinitrd is a stage in one of these then forgive me.

Either way, it sounds like you can't create a temporary directory. Make sure you're compiling in a directory you have full permissions to (eq your home directory). If that fails, you could compile it as root. This is generally considered to be a bad idea, but having said that, I compile everything as root, because I use /usr/src and I don't want other users to have permissions to write there. Do as I say, not as I do.
Guy

That means the mktemp step in mkinitrd failed. Normally you should have some more output as to the exact cause. Try mkinitrd --verbose and report what it says here.

it says unknown option :
Unknown option: --
Try mk_initrd -h

this is the line in /sbin/mkinitrd
where problem occurs

tmp_dir=`mktemp -qd $root_dir/$tmp_dir/mkinitrd.XXXXXX`
if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
echo "$0: Can't create temp dir, exiting..."
exit 1