I'm trying to recompile Kernl v. 2.4.20-13.8! There's always a problem with it though (It never boots). So could someone please give me A SHORT briefing of how to recompile the kernel from scratch, and how to obtain good settings for my computer, yet reseting the current ones that I have saved? DONT TELL ME TO SEARCH FOR A TUTORIAL ON THE NET! Thank you!

What is your distro? RedHat, for example, provide the kernel via RPM. Is this applicable to you?

RH8.0 --> Yeah i know..but that's not the problem. I want a smaller sized kernel with certain tweaks and settings that I need. Besides, a smaller sized kernel would run a lil faster and speed is everything when you have a 500 Mhz system with only 192mb of ram!

Have you been to www.kernel.org or www.tldp.org? The first has kernels, the second has how-tos. Word of caution - the RH kernel is an RH tweaked version, adding a custom kernel may cause things to stop working.

Good luck.

Bah! P2 266 ownz you!

LOL ACTUALLY!!! i'm a celeron :P! BEAT THAT MR. KOOL CPU HAVING MAN! I have less L2 Cache memory! LOL It's sad when you brag about how bad your cpu is!

First download the kernel that you want. Unpack it to /usr/src, then:
cd /usr/src/<directory of your new kernel>
make menuconfig or make xconfig
make dept
make clean
make bzImage
make modules
make modules_install
Then copy /boot/vmlinuz to vmlinuz.old
Then copy /usr/src/<directory of your new kernel>/arch/i386/boot/bzImage to /boot /vmlinuz
Then copy /usr/src/<directory of your new kernel>/arch/i386/boot/bzImage to /boot /System.map to /boot/System.map
Edit your /etc/lilo.conf or /boot/grub/grub.conf to add a configuration line for your new kernel.
If using lilo run /sbin/lilo
You should be done then.
Is this what you wanted?