AAARGH!!!

Everything went well throughout the install but when I booted it complained that it could not load vmlinuz.
This is obviosly bad thing 'couse it is one the first things it loads on boot.
Chose not to instal any new boot loaders and only boot from disc. It did everything as it should have, and every file that shoud be on the disc, is on the disc. Including vmlinuz. WTF!

Please help me with this. I am a with Linux, so first it could be important to explayne me what vmlinuz exactly is. Can I download copy of it somewhere or is it different on every machine?

Also I think I should tell you that I am running XP and will not give it up. The Red Hat 9 is installed on a different HD than XP. The RH9 is running kernel 2.4.20-8 if remember correctly from the instal menu.

vmlinuz is the linux kernel. you need a boot loader installed to get the computer to start linux.

okey... I now know that vmlinuz is the compressed linux kernel that runs on startup... So I thought that I'll just search for new one... So I did... I found the sources but not the complete file and everywhere I go they tell me to compile it my self... How the hell will I compile my Kernel if my Linux won't start!?!

Then it occurred to me that even if i got the normal kernel compiled, I'de still had to make it somehow the vmlinuz (the compressed kernel). And I really don't have any clue how to do that... This is really starting to piss me of... Anybody that has Red Hat 9 installed with basic kernel, please make a boot disk, because the vmlinuz will be there, and sen the vmlinuz file to me. If someone could do this I really would appreciate it.

Thanks.

by the way on the install it said "If you want the Linux only to start from boot disc, choose "don't install boot loader""
so I didn't.
Also when I then booted to windows after the problem I checked with The Text Tool application if all of them could be opened. I found that there was some error in vmlinuz that cosed the problem. It just wouldn't load in any way... Text Tool is a program which I use to look into the binary of programs. Every program will open in it if it works, spelling meaningless characters however, but at least it loads. vmlinuz didn't. My copy then must be damaged somehow.

Just visited Redhat.com again... "If you choose not to install GRUB or LILO for any reason, you will not be able to boot the system directly, and you will need to use another boot method (such as a boot diskette). Use this option only if you are sure you have another way of booting the system!"

you can get to your linux distribution by booting the rescue cdrom, and picking rescue. your linux distribution will be mounted. you don't need to be messing with different kernels and compiling source and stuff. you're just having a boot problem. i suggest you go through the install again, and let install put lilo in the boot sector of the linux root partition. then you'll have more options to boot.
or you can use the rescue cdrom and let it install the bootloader. make sure you pick the boot sector of the linux root partition, and not the master boot record of your windows hard drive.
getting somebody to send you a vmlinuz floppy will not do any good.

Thanks. I'll try that.

linux isn't using the windows filesystem, so your tool doesn't know how to view it.

The boot now works... As I said I never did want to load RH 9 automatically on start nor to be on boot dialog.... I did an "upgrade" with the same Install CD and tried to install Grup but when I clicked next it said "No Kernel packages found on hd:s. Setup will not install loader." After this it asked me if I wanted to make a boot disc. So I thought I'll rewrite the boot disc. So I did. Boot. Checking Floppy.... Boot found.. etc... And this time the vmlinuz loaded!! Oh yeah!! The first vmlinuz must have been some how corrupted or something cose now this boots just fine... The boot goes just like I wanted it to...

i didn't know what had gone wrong with your booting, but iwas telling you to put the boot loader in the linux root partition because you didn't want it to boot automatically, and it wouldn't have, if you had done that, and i was helping you do what you wanted. good you got it, and it was the boot floppy, just messed up.

you should start a new thread, so nobody has to read the boot stuff, and knows this is networking. also, so the network guys will see it.