Kernel 2.6.6 difficulties

[n3wo]

I realise that whenever a kernel installation problem comes up, forum regulars all scream "READ THE HOWTOS!!!!" "SEARCH GOOGLE", and other such advice. I have done both, and succeded in finding two howto's revent to the 2.6.x kernel. After trying the install twice (once without paying much attention to the help provided with all the kernel options and once paying attention) I have given up and come here. I am currently running RH 9 and the 2.4.20-8 kernel on a box with a combo DVD ROM/ CD-RW drive. I can burn CD's just fine, and was told that to get my DVD drive working, I should upgrade to a 2.6.x kernel. I downloaded the source, unzipped it and ran the make menuconfig utility, and all subsequent commands through make modules_install. Also, mkinitrd returns the error "mkinitrd: no such command." everything else went flawlessly, and i configured lilo to allow me to boot my new 2.6.6 kernel. I select it at bootup and the list of actions sscrolls by (you know, the one with the green writing on the right hand side saying OK) but many lines say "FAILED". I end up with a message that the x server encountered errors, and running the configuration option presented does not help. I am able to use the text login and view files, etc and run the shutdown command. Startx only generates errors. I'm not sure which processes fail at bootup because they scroll by too quickly. Is there a file which stores the bootup messages? Does anyone know what is wrong with my kernel?
Thanks,

N3WO


PS Sorry for the huge post

[Dolda2000]

I moved the topic to the Kernel forum.

It is true that to use a 2.6 kernel on RH9, you need to do some additional system updates to make all the userspace tools compatible. Try reading this article:
http://thomer.com/linux/migrate-to-2.6.html

[n3wo]

I've installed the recommended packages from the post mentioned above, and tried re-compiling a few times, paying close attention to my configuration options, and now the kernel boots as far as
"Freeing unused kernel mem: 252K Freed
Kernel Panic: no init found
try passing init= INIT to the kernel"

I have the initrd configured in lilo the same as the initrd for my old 2.4.20-8 Kernel which still boots fine. Does anyone know how I can pass an init to the kernel at boot up. Or, better yet, how I can resolve this problem for good?
Thanks for the help.

N3WO

[Dolda2000]

It's probably not a very good idea to reuse your old initrd. It will contain drivers for the 2.4 kernel.

Instead, don't use an initrd at all. Compile the root device driver and root filesystem driver into the kernel and skip the initrd. Also, make sure that the root option you're passing to the kernel uses the /dev/xxx scheme and not the LABEL=xxx scheme. RedHat seems to like those disklabels, but they're usually just making things worse. That is, if your root filesystem resides on, for example, /dev/hda5, make sure to pass "root=/dev/hda5" to the kernel.

[variant]

yeah! without initrd your system will boot 4872435million times faster!

[n3wo]

OK, how do I "skip initrd"?? I tried removing the line init = linux-2.6.6.img from lilo.conf, but that didn't help.

Thanks

N3WO

[Dolda2000]

Each time you change your lilo.conf you need to rerun lilo to rebuild the boot sector.

Are you really using LILO? Why didn't you choose to install GRUB instead - it's the default for RH9, and for a good reason, I might add. ;-)

[n3wo]

I'm using lilo because I coudn't find a way to configure Grub to recognize a new kernel. How should I re-configure grub? I know I have it, because it is what I used to use.

[Dolda2000]

GRUB's config file is named /boot/grub/grub.conf or /boot/grub/menu.lst - it differs from system to system. The thing (or one of the many things) with GRUB is that it reads the config file itself, so you don't need to run a program or anything each time you change it.

[n3wo]

OK, I've edited grub.conf so that there is an entry for 2.6.6 with all the elements of the 2.4.20-8 entry. How do I re-install grub as my default bootloader? Right now lilo is what is loading at the beginning, and it has stopped offering me any choices, it is booting straight into the 2.4.20-8 kernel.