ok the situation is.... When i install mandriva 2006 free there is no option to install the kernel source from the installation screen when you first install it so i have to urpmi kernel-source-2.6 or rpmdrake it and either one it instal lit as i586 instead of i686. I more of a old linux user and I remember to was to rebuild the kernel source to any form but the commands --rebuild -target and --rebuild rebuild (redhat) don't work and I search the internet for it and no luck. can anyone help me? thanks.

Most of Mandriva's packages are i586 including the kernel and kernel-source. I am not sure if recompiling the kernel to i686 will make any difference in the day to day running of your system.

I think you'd better use another distro like Gentoo. Mandriva is aimed for user friendliness like users who don't wanna compile their own kernel.

I do not understand that comment.
You can go in text mode and compile the kernel if you wish in mandriva.
The beauty of mandriva is yes userfriednliness, but also that you can grow your
linux knowledge with it. Nothing at all stopping you from kernel compilation there.
Actually you can make the kernel leaner that way. And yes, gentoo seats at the other end of the distro spectrum in some ways. But a kernel is a kernel.
You could even try a vanilla kernel with mandy (a few patches may be missing though)

maybe you are after (once in /usr/src/linux)
make menuconfig
or make xconfig
and then usual make && make modules && make install (please check the syntax)

Hello thanks for the reply. It's make && make mrproper && make dep && make bzImage && make modules && make modules install lol. umm well you could just do a --rebuild -target -source <kernel> i686 (or to any form in old distros)and that change the kernel source to i686 or keep it i586 with a kernel that can use i586 with a i686 kernel :-/ lol weird past days lol.

I think the --rebuild snd the others are working with the rebuild command so what you wrote may work with the kernel-source rpms.