Just out of curiosity, what's the size of your kernel image file? I also use lilo and no initrd. I'm using 2.6.31.1 with Lenny and have not run into any boot problems yet.-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 12781374 Oct 29 18:11 /usr/src/linux-image-2.6.31- davidb_2.6.31-davidb-10.00.Custom_i386.deb -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 12785544 Nov 16 22:14 /usr/src/linux-image-2.6.31- davidb-svn14611_2.6.31-davidb-svn14611-10.00.Custom_i386.deb -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 12870190 Oct 28 19:29 /usr/src/linux-image-2.6.31-rt- davidb_2.6.31-rt-davidb-10.00.Custom_i386.deb -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 13104356 Dec 27 21:23 /usr/src/linux-image-2.6.32.1- davidb_2.6.32-davidb-10.00.Custom_i386.deb -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 13109468 Dec 28 19:41 /usr/src/linux-image-2.6.32- davidb_2.6.32-davidb-10.00.Custom_i386.deb The last one is the 2.6.32.3 image. Simply note the progression :-) The 2.6.31.1 (first one) is much much smaller.
You were not asked for the size of the DEB files, but for the size of the kernel binary image. Like so:
$ ls -lA /boot/vmlinuz* -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2340800 Dec 18 23:34 /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2992976 Dec 20 10:44 /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32.2-0git091220+k10temp+f71889fg.desktop.uvesafb -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3232736 Dec 22 21:12 /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32.2-0git+k10temp+f71889fg+r600fix.091222.desktop.kms
Note that most of the space suggested by the size of your DEB files is taken up in the initrd images and in the modules directories:
$ ls -lA /boot/init* -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 7424984 Dec 26 17:14 /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 7427240 Dec 26 17:09 /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32.bak $ du -s /lib/modules/2.6.32* 91452 /lib/modules/2.6.32 3948 /lib/modules/2.6.32.2-0git091220+k10temp+f71889fg.desktop.uvesafb 2708 /lib/modules/2.6.32.2-0git+k10temp+f71889fg+r600fix.091222.desktop.kms HTH, Dave W.