installing and compiling linux kernel

Hello,

I have downloaded the newest most stable Linux kernel, 2.6.33.2.

I thought I would test this using VirtualBox. So I create a dynamically sized hard disk of 4 GB. And installed CentOS 5.3 with just the minimum packages, just the development libs and development tools.

I unzipped in the /usr/src directory.

I setup the make menuconfig with just the default settings.

After that I ran make and got the following error:

Code:

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net/bluetooth/hci_sysfs.o: final close failed: No space left on device
make[2]: *** [net/bluetooth/hci_sysfs.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [net/bluetooth] Error 2
make: *** [net] Error 2

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The amount of space I have left is after it give that error is:

Code:

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# df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00
                      3.3G  3.3G    0 100% /
/dev/hda1              99M  12M  82M  13% /boot
tmpfs                125M    0  125M  0% /dev/shm

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So my virtual harddisk size is 4gb and the actual size if 3.5gb. So what happened to the other 500mb?

How much size should I give when compiling and installing a Linux kernel? Are there any guidelines to follow when doing this? This is my first time, so just experimenting with this.

Many thanks,