Newbie kernel build problem

[Andrew Robinson]

I tried to build a kernel as an exercise on how to build a kernel. The process seemed to work. However, when I booted with my new kernel, no modules loaded, including some insignificant ones like networking. I'm hoping someone can give me some insight on what I did wrong.

The tutorial I was using was the Red Hat Linux 7.3 Bible. Here are the steps:

1. Install kernel source code. I noticed that during the initial up2date upgrades, the kernel changed from whatever came on the CDs to linux-2.4.18-24.7.x. I downloaded the source rpm for that kernel from Red Hat and installed it. Because I did not want to screw up anything that was working, I made a copy of the source directory, named /usr/src/linux-2.4.18-24.7.tst1.x and moved the link from linux-2.4 to that directory.

2. I made a boot disk to get myself out of trouble if needed:
mkbootdisk --device /dev/fd0 2.4.18-24.7.x

3. Various make steps for the kernel. I looked around in xconfig, but I did not change anything:
make mrproper
make xconfig
make dep
make clean
make bzImage

4. Make steps for the modules. It seemed like the messages returned in these two steps indicated that things were up to date and make did not need to do much (if anything):
make modules
make modules_install

5. My computer has no SCSI adapter so I skipped the mkinitrd step.

6. I copied the bzImage file into /boot with an appropriate vmlinuz name, careful not to overwrite the existing kernel. I copied the existing entry in the grub.conf file with the appropriate name change. Then I rebooted.

As stated above, the PC booted with the new kernel and I was able to log in, seemingly normally. However, I had no network and dmesg had strange mumblings about modules. The lsmod command returned nothing. Am I correct in assuming that my mistake happened somewhere around step 4? What should I have done?

Thanks!

Andrew Robinson


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