Re: Installing kernel-image-2.4.17-k7

[Stan Kaufman <sekfmn@pacbell.net>]

Faheem Mitha wrote:

> On 27 Feb 2002, Bill Moseley wrote:
>
> > So, I'd like to avoid the kernel panic this time with the
> > kernel-image-2.4.17-k7 package.  What steps do I need to take to make sure
> > I will end up with a bootable image?  Someone mentioned that moving to the
> > more modular 2.4 kernel might have been the problem - something about not
> > setting up initrd?

I just installed 2.4.17 on a new woody box, which involved an upgrade from the
2.2.14 potato system my floppy install disks created. The kernel-image package
provided clear notice during installation that the bootloader needs to be altered
in order to find the new image, since it's handled differently from the 2.2.x
kernels. Since I use lilo, it was a simple matter of adding a couple of lines to
the right entry in /etc/lilo.conf:

image=/vmlinuz
    label=Linux
    initrd=/initrd.img
    root=/dev/hda2   # wherever your boot partition is
    read-only

etc etc...

You'd have to handle this differently with different bootloaders no doubt;
perhaps sid now does things differently too (?). Anyway, once you've altered
lilo.conf and run lilo, the kernel install runs flawlessly.

> > Anyway, last time I just apt-get install kernel-image-2.4.17-k7, but
> > perhaps that was not enough.  I poked around looking for docs, but mostly
> > found info about compiling my own.  Any pointers?

Should be enough; the package maintainer's scripts clearly said "Don't go any
further until you've fixed your bootloader". It would have been more helpful if
there had been more explicit info about how to do so, but that's what the
archives of this list are for!

That said, all of Faheem's suggestions about rolling your own kernel are great
ones.

Stan