Something has obviously gone wrong here.

bzImage has to be there, it can't not be there, unless the compile failed.

I would delete the entire kernel source directory, redownload it, and start over from scratch.

Configure it again, do "make bzImage" (and ONLY "make bzImage") and then copy the bzImage.

ok, ill try that (wouldnt I also need to do a make modules_install?)

If at all possible please post your .config file from the linux source directory, it would be a curious read I'm sure.


Also another thought I had today... is try running "make mrproper" maybe you have some funky linking going on causing this... that command should clean the source directory up straight.

well, i was running make mrpropper everytime, but MS3FGX's suggestion has cured all ailments, and I now have the bzImage. rebooting now to make sure I compiled in everything i needed too, but my problem has been solved.

Thanks for all your help.

If your vmlinuz is too large (happened to me too a long while ago), you need to symlink it. So ln -s vmlinuz vmlinuz-ide-2.6.whatever. That way when lilo boots it looks to the shortcut instead. Yes.. i know ..weird ...but that's the way to do it.

Cheers.

just out of curiosity, why would lilo care what size the kernel is ?

Even though the problem has been resolved, perhaps someone is interested in this. A few months ago I needed to fine-tune a smal kernel. Over 2 days time I did over 120 kernel compiles, each time adding just one feature and then noting the size change. This was done with kernel 2.4.29 so the figures probably don't relate exactly, but it should give you an idea of the relative size of stuff anyway.
You can see my notes at:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/...ture-sizes.txt

Keep in mind that you onlyneed to hard-compile the features that you need to access your root file system and the device that it's on and certain features that can't be built as modules at all(if you need them).
Boot loaders DO care about the size of the kernel. ISOLINUX is the most forgiving and will let you boot kernels up to 48MB!
Zimage kernels are only possible below +-650K. Any bigger and you get: 'kernel too big for standalone bootup' -just means you have to use a bootloader, which is nearly universal anyway.
In case you want to manually install your kernel, after compiling the bzImage is located in:
arch/i386/boot (relative to the toplevel kernel source).