Hi bro!
I'm still getting those IPTable failures after reinstalling the kernel..... wonder why's that.....
I missed something, didn't I?

I also get a "usb-uhci not found error"

Again the usb-uhci not found error is because that's the wrong name for the driver, change the name in modprobe.conf to [b]uhci-hcd[/c]. And yes you can have as many as your mobo or add-in card chipset drivers as you need (I have ohci-hcd, ehci-hcd and uhci-hcd loaded at any one time, becuase my MoBo has all those chipsets, odd eh?)

About the iptables error, you should see open up the file /etc/init.d/iptables to see what modules does it require and see if you have them.

Thanks, man!

Mind my English, haven't been using it for a while, haha..... you told me about the wrong driver name a few posts before, sorry about that, the USB is working fine now

Just wondering, which file do I go to if i want to view the entire bootup sequence in detail? I think I caught eye on something like:
"grep proc/bus/usb/driver no such file or directory" and
"PCI: ..... doesn't match PIRQ mask, try....."
Just ignore those above?

About IPTables, how do I use the /etc/init.d/iptables file? Sorry, I'm a real newbie, heheh

You may the relevant boot up messgaes with the command "dmesg".

About the iptables stuff, just open it in a text editor and see which modules does it load, I know there are a couple that are needed, then it'd be easier to configure those in your kernel.

About your English... worry not, I'm not a native English speaker myself! My native language is Spanish (I'm from Mexico), so I do have my share of mistakes in the laguage area

Thanks bro! I finally got someone that always answers my questions! You are the MAN!
Anywhere I can find a shell command list? Better get my basics wprk out first, haha

I'm looking at the IPTables now, in the mean time these few line that appeared during bootup bothers me:
* I got this message appearing twice!
PCI: IRQ 0 for device 0000:00:0f.1 doesn't match PIRQ mask - try pci=usepirqmask
*ide-scsi is deprecated for cd burning! Use ide-cd and give dev=/dev/hdX as device

Also, I don't think my CD drive is mounted...... there ain't cdrom0 in /mnt
I'm installing kernel 2.6.0 but 2.6.3 appears in the grub bootloader menu.....

Just wondering, is there a need to upgrade my existing 2.4.20-8 kernel that came with RH9?
I've been playing with kernels for a week, I only have a months time to get the system up and running, still have backups (SATA and RAID) and network printing to think about..... if upgrading the kernel is not that important, I might opt to skip it until I get printing and backups done, any advice, guru?

For the IRQ thing, you may want to see what does dmesg say about that. The other line is simply that you don't have to use the kernel argument hd*=ide-ssi any more as a boot parameter if you have a cd-burner (like it was the case in the 2.4.x kernels). But this has the inconvenience of having to re-link the /dev/cdrom symlink, from scd0 to the actual hd* your drive may reside on.

What do you mean about not being a /mnt/cdrom0? usually it is /mnt/cdrom (for /dev/cdrom) and /mnt/cdrom1 (for /dev/cdrom1)...

About the kernel, you may easily find out what version do you have, if you open (just open, do not edit!) the Makefile located at the top directory of the kernel source tree ((/usr/src/linux-2.6.3/, for instance). There the first few line will tell you what version your kernel is.

Very good question! The answer is easy: there are a number of security and bug fixes added in the folllowing versions of the kernel. Companies such as Red Hat usually release updated kernel packages for their distributions. In the case of Red Hat, the latest kernel they have for the free version of their distro is (I think) 2.4.20-31.9, and you can grab it in the convenient rpm format. Actually I think that you should upgrade your kernel because of two main things:

• Because of the already mentioned bug and security fixes.
• Becuase improved compatibility with either software or hardware.

In the case of the scurity and bug fixes, there's no room to think about it twice, but you should try to build your own kernel only when you have problems with the default setup or (if you're a speed junkie like me) to get the most out of your computer (which may render it unstable under certain circumstances).

So my Padawan, my answer to your final question would be: consider the pros and cons before attempting that. You can achieve what you seek (RAID and SATA) without having to change your kernel from stock RH kernels (those you have to update, of course!). However, compiling your own kernel, besides teaching you a great deal about how does Linux works in the inside, also may broaden and widen the SATA compatibility. Until I compiled a 2.4.22 kernel, I could decently use a SATA setup (not RAID yet) on a SII-3112 chipset..

cdrom is not mounted..... its not even there
Anyway, I had a break yesterday, back to work again now!

I did seriously learn a lot about linux's internal stuff with this kernel compilationg thingy! Thanks to you, mate!

The reason I played around with the kernel is I got stuck with cups, also I had SATA drives in mind, so don't think it'll hurt to start with kernels, hahaha

Well, better get back to work..... Thanks a million, bro! You've helped me a lot!

Cheers Thetargos!

~Will~

Glad I could hep you. About the CD, where does it point the symlink /dev/cdrom? (ls -l /dev/cdrom).

I'm reinstalling the kernel now.....

There's only /mnt/floppy at the time from memory and there's no /dev/cdrom/
Missing module maybe?

Nope, just missing the link

Link again:
You should actually link to the actual device your CD is on

Edit:

You may want to restart the kudzu service to generate the /etc/fstab entry:
If that doesn't help, just manually add the CD rom entry in fstab:
If running kudzu again, removes the entry, re-edit and just remove the ,kudzu, option.

OK, found it in my 2.4.20-8 kernel and its pointing to /dev/scd0
Are there any difference in the 2.6.x kernels?

Than how do I mount the cdrom drive?

should my /etc/mtab and /etc/fstab files have "cdrom" in it?
What are these 2 files for?

Look above

i'll do that! Get back to you when everything's OK

cheers mate!

ok, I did those steps you mentioned above but there's still no /mnt/cdrom

so I created /mnt/cdrom (mkdir) and mounted it using:
"mount -t iso9660 /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom"
no autorun or anything....Don't think I'm doing the correct thing..... more advice maybe?

Hmm... running /sbin/service kudzu restart should have created also /mnt/cdrom... But it didn't... There's no problem really, since (as every other mount point) it's just a directory, just make sure (by re-running kudzu) that it stays there. Otherwise (as mentioned earlier) just remove the kudzu entry from the options of the mount point.

Also you should see the CD-Rom listed in the mountable devices contextual menu (right click) in KDE and/or GNOME.