I thought it was going to be easy, but...
I started out with a RedHat 9 system (it has a 2.4 kernel) trying to get it on my older 486 machine. As it doesn't need to do much I thought it would work OK. I attempted to load RH9, and it says "can't do that". OK, I understand, and take the disk to a newer machine and load it using that. It boots fine there. I then seek to get a kernel that will work on a 486. Go to 'kernel.org' and fetch kernel 2.4.34.5, which is reasonably recent. Use a config from the RH9 kernel and copy it over to the new kernel. I then edited the processor parameters to turn on 'CONFIG_M486' (others off). Now do a 'make oldconfig' to get it all up to speed.

The resulting kernel compiles just fine. It even loads on the modern (its a VIA machine) motherboard. It just doesn't run on the 486 machine. From the looks of it, it fails when attempting to start the 'init' process.

This should be 'easy' (a relative term), but of course noting really is. So: HELP!!

"The resulting kernel compiles just fine. It even loads on the modern (its a VIA machine) motherboard. It just doesn't run on the 486 machine. From the looks of it, it fails when attempting to start the 'init' process."

My first guess would be that you have a memory problem. Try booting the kernel on a modern machine and seeing how much memory it uses. Compare that to how much memory you have on the 486.

-------------
Steve Stites

Memory thoughts (see previous). The 486 machine has 64megs, and will boot (via floppy) the distrubution CD for RH9. After you enter in all the information, it says (nastily) that it can't install. Other than that......

The "modern" machine has 192 megs. Maybe I can try with less, but I don't know if that is the problem. I have a swap partition, so that should help a bit.