that make -C thing was the end part of the make process.
I am doing what he says to the letter. i'm using bare.i

I THINK I'VE GOT IT!
the ln -s yada yada linux
thing didn't work b/c i had to remove the origional folder named "linux"!

okay, i see. try the make mrproper, that should clean out all the old kernel stuff.

btw, i just noticed a huge thing: you never mentioned what version of the kernel you're acually using for this. if you're using a 2.4.x kernel the instructions will be slightly different than 2.6.x.

doh! congratulations.

that helps the instructions, also. i never though to mention that 'cause i guess i do it almost unconsciously. but glad to hear you figured it out and got it working. post back if you have any more questions.

I just completed the whole procedure and didn't need to touch lilo.conf i just needed to delete and create a vmlinuz symbolic link. Kernel 2.6.12.4, btw.
I'm gonna reboot and see what happens!

Um... I cant see what happens now. my partition table's are corrupt. Knoppix here can see them fine, but cfdisk cant. I cant boot from it either. arg.
How do I get my partition table back now that it's crapped! I'm not throwing all my stuff on DVDs and restarting from scratch!

Now 10 minutes later, cfdisk works again. I decided to write what was already there and reboot. Wish me luck!

lunarcloud_88 did you run lilo after putting your kernel as vmlinuz? It's a must, and also, I would recommend you to "edit" lilo.conf so you can have your old kernel on the menu in case the new one doesn't work.

I did go into lilo.config at first, but realized i didnt need to touch it.
ok... i have resorted to using my dad's winXP to type this, b/c knoppix wont boot now. Slackware install disc just freezes up at "Loading initrd.img ............................" and says there is a cd error even though the disc is in pristine shape.
I cant go into lilo.conf to fix this! arg! any idea why this is happening? i'll be back. I am going to try and use the ext2/3 drivers for windows with my windows hard drive to edit lilo.conf

Btw, when i try booting normally, it says lilo loaded and goes... and then i see only a blank black screen.

Probably you can't boot from your harddisk because LILO wasn't updated.

I'll try to give you a little explain about LILO: It's a program that's placed on the beggining of your partition that executes a little code to load a kernel, that's it, to load a OS.
Just editing /etc/lilo.conf won't make the program installed on that sector to change, you need to run the program that updates it, and that's called /sbin/lilo in Linux.

The only way to fix it is to write again that little program, that's it, you need to boot Linux to be able to re-edit lilo.conf and make /sbin/lilo update the program at the beggining of the partition.

even if the kernel name is the same, afaik you still have to run lilo because the image is different. that's why it pays to follow instructions.

what happens when you try to run knoppix? the slax CD is worth a try, or try passing the boot options for your root partition to the slack install disk if you didn't do it that way:

# boot: bare.i root=/dev/hdx noinitrd ro

then once you're in, RUN LILO!

I'm inside knoppix now using the CD drive instead of the ultra-sensitive DVD drive.
I am going to run lilo and /sbin/lilo wish me luck.

BTW, i have used Slax and really like it. I just haven't burned a copy in a while.

you can't run lilo from knoppix without chrooting the slack root partition and a bunch of other stuff. i did it a couple times, but it was a PITA. you have to pay attention to the error messages, and when lilo gives you an error about not having a file, you have to point to it on the command line with certain options (man lilo, or lilo --help). like i said, i forget exactly what the files were, but i remember that's how i had to do it, one file at a time, looking up the options each time, until it had the location of 2 or 3 different files at least.

i think the best way would be to boot the bare.i kernel from the slack CD the way slackhack described. then you can just run lilo normally without doing all the chrooting and everything. *much* easier.

Okay. Knoppix restored the partition table with cfdisk and it would be corrupt everytime i'd try to boot from the 2.6 kernel. So i restore the table, then restore the symbolic links to the way they were. then i run the slack disc and opt for normal installer boot. i mount my installation and run pkgtool and then run lilo. It is back to normal. I think I'll try this again sometime with a fresh install. sorrym but i am discouraged at almost loosing everything. i dont understand what went wrong, but maybe i'll install the 2.6 kernel from the "/testing" on the new slack 10.2 beta to come.

Update! I got my audio/dvd stuff working again. i switched the order of those drives for booting purposes and needed to change my /dev/cdrom and /dev/dvd accordingly to reflect that. also, my sound just needed to be re-"chmod 777 /dev/dsp*"-ed. and such. i will try at the newer kernel someday!

A warning about updating kernels with 'slapt-get', 'swaret' and 'slackpkg':
They have a nasty habit of rolling 2.6x kernels back to 2.4x series!
Rather download manually and upgrade with upgradepkg!

Also remember, that if you have 1Gig or more of RAM, you have to compile your own kernel to access it all under Slackware. Use PV's config as a starting point and you can't go wrong

I tried compiling and as u can see it went very wrong. lol.

Inhale.
Exhale.
Repeat as necessary.
You're doing just fine; my learning curve was a lot steeper.

I find that the best compile guide is the one in the readme's with the source from kernel.org.

And it really is easier compiling from your home directory then worrying about setting all the symlinks correctly.

If you are worried about security, just delete everything afterwards.

good luck!

PS: when I compiled my first kernel I had about 5 kernel compile guides open for easy reference