I'm on 14.1 32 bit and successfully installed the generic kernel, but find that I am now unable to boot into the huge kernel. Is that normal?

I'm just happy that I can boot into my system and have my wireless working this time. But am curious about the huge kernel now.

The huge and the generic kernel are independent from each other, so if you have your Lilo setup correctly (and generated an initrd for the generic kernel) there shouldn't be a problem with any of them. Please give us a more specific error description.

Okay, give me a little bit to write down the exact error message. It looks like a kernel panic message, but I'll write it down when I reboot.

Here's my lilo.conf to start. I'm not sure if this is how it's supposed to look.

# Linux bootable partition config begins
image = /boot/vmlinuz
root = /dev/sda2
label = Linux
read-only
# Linux bootable partition config ends
# Linux bootable partition config begins
image = /boot/vmlinuz-generic-smp-3.10.17-smp
initrd = /boot/initrd.gz
root = /dev/sda2
label = Lnx31017
read-only
# Linux bootable partition config ends

/boot/vmlinuz is a symlink, try 'ls /boot/vmlinuz' to see which kernel version is pointing; you can add another boot option too

because huge version has fs driver compiled built-in, you don't need initrd, unless you have strange hardware

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My bet is that the /boot/vmlinuz symlink now points to the generic kernel vmlinuz-generic-smp-3.10.17-smp.

Change 'image = /boot/vmlinuz' to point to the huge kernel image and rerun lilo.

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Is it either the generic kernel or the huge? I found the instructions to install the generic kernel, but does that mean I can not boot the huge? What happens if an update for the kernel comes out, or if I upgrade to another kernel? Do I need to stay to the generic kernel? I just want to know so as to not mess up my system.

You don't need that symlink at all (and yes, a symlink can only point to one file). So just replace it in your lilo.conf with the actual names of the kernels. Which one you boot is up to you, you can decide at boot if you set up Lilo correctly.
For clarification, kernels in a release version of Slackware are very rarely updated (usually only if there is a serious security problem or a significant bug). But even if they are, you usually never update them, you install the new kernel side-by-side with the old one, so that you can actually test it before switching over.

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Thanks, adding the name of the huge kernel worked and I can boot into both. More importantly I learned about inatalling generic kernels. Thanks for all of your help.

Update:

I did successfully install the generic kernel on my laptop. And only have one generic kernel installed. I then went to work on my HP tower that has an NVIDIA 6150 SE Video card. It was running slackware 14.0 64 bit and I also successfully installed the generic kernel on that too, but did not have the proprietary NVIDIA drivers installed. I was using the nouveau drivers.

I blacklisted the kernel in slackpkg and proceeded to upgrade to 14.1, which went successfully and everything is running well with the 3.2.45 kernel from 14.0. I proceeded to then install the generic kernel for 14.1 following the directions from here: http://mirrors.slackware.com/slackwa.../README.initrd and here: http://docs.slackware.com/slackware:beginners_guide.

I can successfully log in with both kernels and tried installing the proprietary NVIDIA legacy driver, but that failed to install. When I'm logged in with the 3.10.17 kernel it looks like the proprietary NVIDIA driver is trying to install it on the 3.2.45 kernel.

Could I have missed installing something? Everything seems to be working right now, but I'd like to know for the future.

These were the packages that I installed: kernel-generic-3.10.17-x86_64-3.txz, kernel-modules-3.10.17-x86_64-3.txz, & mkinitrd-1.4.8-x86_64-1.txz.

Whenever you change the kernel you have to build new nvidia driver for it, you can't use the old one.

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That's the strange thing, I didn't have it installed prior to the upgrade.

Maybe I misunderstood what you wrote:How do you know that? And what exact steps did you follow to install the proprietary NVIDIA legacy driver?

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There is really good documentation for each nVidia linux driver. For me I find it easiest to execute the NVIDIA-xxxxx.run file with the "--extract-only" switch, so I can get at all the info in one known place.

Example - This is from the Readme.txt

Actually I had thought that one cannot build the nvidia driver without fully qualified "/usr/src/linux/.config" meaning iirc at least "make modules&&make modules_install" must be actually run, and I always have gone through the full process of building a custom kernel. But the above quotes (bold part) seem to imply one might only need to add the "kernel-devel" package.

However I am confident that if you read that Readme, the "lights will go on for you" as to how much you need to do to prepare a proper environment on your box.

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How did you did you do the upgrade from 14.0 to 14.1?