I agree that debugging old software does not sound useful, so I will
work on building a current kernel. This usually takes me a couple of
iterations to get the devices right. I guess I could use the kernel
from etch, but I would only want the kernel from unstable. I am not
enough of an apt-get expert to know how to get only one package from
unstable. Hmmm, maybe I should just dpkg install the .deb for the
kernel?
You should be able to do that, but you will also need an initramfs
generator package, since 2.6.15 doesn't support devfs and initrd-tools
depends on devfs for operation. If you already have a 2.6 kernel
running, the easiest should be to install yaird and
linux-image-2.6.15-1-alpha-smp; those should be the only two packages you
need from etch.
But also note that since you mention you're using qlogic drivers, the
problem described at
<http://lists.debian.org/debian-alpha/2006/02/msg00159.html> probably
applies...