I have Woody installed with the 2.2-20 kernel. I apt-get installed the
2.4.18 kernel for both k7 and i686. Both installed ok, but both hung on
boot, stating that the root file system couldn't be mounted.
this is because those kernel images use initial ramdisks (initrd) as root
file system, to be able to loading modules (ie reiserfs, xfs) before
mounting and chrooting to your actual /. This is the only way to boot
from say reiserfs root partitions without having support baked in the
kernel.
As an
experiment, I downloaded the latest stable kernel from kernel.org and
compiled it. It compiled and installed fine, and boots fine, except
that it's missing many of the modules I need, including all of the
network modules I need for my nics. I've gone completely through the
kernel configuration several times. They just aren't there. But
they're included in all the dpkgs I've installed. What am I missing?
Is there another source for modules other than the kernel tar ball?
i would recommend using debianized sources and the kernel packager:
# apt-get install kernel-source-2.4.18 kernel-package fakeroot
(now login as normal user, after adding him to group 'src')
# cd /usr/src
(move kernel.org sources out of the way)
# tar -xvjf kernel-source-2.4.18.tar.bz2
# ln -s kernel-source-2.4.18 linux
# cd linux
# make xconfig
# fakeroot (time) make-kpkg --revision=glen.0.1 kernel_image
now installing your new kernel (as root, of course) is as easy as
# dpkg -i /usr/src/kernel-image-2.4.18_glen.0.1_i386.deb
Before, I always used 'make menuconfig' but I have noticed some options
are only available in xconfig (ie activating lpp patch). It can help you
too, because it doesn't actually hide the options that are not available.
That way you can find out more easily which option to use to enable the
nics (Network Device Support -> Ethernet (10/100 Mbit) -> manufacturer ->
chipset)