First off, I gotta warn you, I am just past that "newbie" stage and am still a bit wobbly, ok?

I spent the last few days preparing to try out the 2.6.0-test11 kernel on mandrake 9.1.
I got the required tools and updates.
I configured (several times).
I make bzImage && make .... && make .....

I got a few warnings, but everything went to completion.
I installed the kernel in the boot dir, changed file names, fiddled with lilo.

Now she boots up and seems to run fine except for a few things I am clueless about.

1. The usual startup text that scrolled by while booting up has been replaced by a black screen after I made the switch to the new kernel.
What happened? It would be nice to see if things are loading properly.

2. Using File manager or Natilus in the past allowed me to swap files back and forth between windows and linux partitions without any worry.
The programs still work, and they still see the windows partitions (win c, win e, win f...) but when I enter one of these directories there are no files.
(Sorry, it is a dual booting system I use).

3. I had given thought to updating (not quite the same as installing) to mandrake 9.2. If I do this, will it overwrite my new 2.6.0 kernel and configuration with the "default"?

I thought this option might fix the above 2 problems but am hesitant after hearing of how buggy some people find 9.2

I realise that by not providing at least a small part of the volumes of text spewed out during the configuration process I stand a small chance of getting any solid answers as to what went wrong, but I wouldn't know how to properly get that important text saved out of the mass that is generated.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Waz.

run this

dmesg

Yes, dmesg.
Very interesting and probably informative. Might as well be quantum physic though, I can see it is in english but can't read it.

I did find out yesterday through the use of some sort of linux config tool that fs vfat is not supported by the kernel.

I took the time to re-configure the kernel with the MSDOS and FAT file system built into the kernel instead of being loaded as modules. This morning I have the same problem, the win98 directories are visible but seem to contain nothing.

As for dmesg, there might be some issues to deal with in there, but I wouldn't know.
I tried to dmesg > dmesg.txt and save that file to a floppy so I could read it on my internet machine and send it in this reply, but it seems that the floppy drive on the afflicted system doesn't actually save to floppy, but somewhere in a phantom unlnown area (Ramdisk?) that has somehow replaced the floppy.... does this make sense???



Thanks for the reply!

dmesg should be similar output to the scrolling text during boot that you are looking to restore. You can do a dmesg | less, to get the output screen by screen or you can use "grep" to look for specific things in your dmesg, a command like "dmesg | grep fd0" would be useful for determining what might be up with the floppy you are having problems with. Youc can replace the "fd0" in the command above with any device (or keyword) you are trying to troubleshoot.

One more thing, you can use a simple text editor or even your web browser to open the dmesg text file you created, then you can paste that into the forum.

The blank screen is something with the video drivers in the 2.6 kernel. Hunt around in the video section of xconfig and look for an option with frame buffer, or console text or something like that. I can't remember exactly what it was but there is an option that will enable the console and boot to have text. As for why it isn't enabled by default I have no clue. Sorry I couldn't be more specific.

For the blank screen make sure youve these options in your .config as follows
CONFIG_INPUT=y, CONFIG_VT=y, CONFIG_VGA_CONSOLE=y and CONFIG_VT_CONSOLE=y. I used to have the same problem before and I got the solution here
http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/linux/linu...3-28/0327.html
It doesnt show up a little tux on the top of the screen.. but it does fine with me as I can see the messages scroll by.
Regarding the windows folder problems am not so sure about what option you might have missed. Do check the if you have everything under Filesystems>DOS/FAT/NT Filesystems option as on (preferably built into the kernel).
Hope this helps and let us know if it did

The problem with the access to my Win directories has been resolved.
I re-installed everything then upgraded to 9.2 and then intsalled a 2.6.0-mdk.rpm kernel.

I have not been able to configure it, it seemd to plop itself nicely into boot, so I tried booting with it and it works.
I guess this resolves question #3 also.

So, just the blank screen issue up till now, which has probably been taken care of (above) thanks valerie!