Kernel problems

[Mark Carroll <mark@chaos.x-philes.com>]

The kernel 2.4.9 built from source on my laptop appears to boot okay but
the mouse and keyboard don't work, despite USB and PS/2 support being
included.

The 2.2.18pre21 image I'm using works fine. So, the idea was to get the
2.4.9 image to see if that works too - if it does, maybe I screwed up the
.config somewhere when I tried to build it from source instead.

However, despite being listed on packages.debian.org, I don't seem to be
able to download any kernel-image-2.4.9-*.deb from any of the sites on
package download pages - the files aren't there.

I can't use kernel-image-2.4.10 because of bug #114700 because I can't
find where to get a modutils 2.4.8-1 or similar.

However, kernel-image-2.4.12 does work for me.

So, a couple of questions:

Although I want a 2.4.x kernel, I don't need a bleeding-edge one. Is 2.4.9
a reasonable stable choice, or would it be no loss to go with a later one
anyway?

How do I find out what .config each kernel in each image package was built
with, so I can compare them with the .config I created for compiling the
2.4.9 source, and try incremental changes between a close image one and
mine to find the problem with my 2.4.9 .config?

Thanks,
        Mark