[Nottingham] Request for CDW help

[Philip Scott]

Heya,
> What is a vanilla kernal? I did try compiling a simple game a few months
> ago, 
Sorry - There I go, using terminology that's not really needed :) I simply 
meant an unmodified one; lots of distros (I'm not sure about SuSE's position) 
on this fiddle around with the kernel and patch them a bit before they 
include them (Redhat are notorious for it) and they sometimes break thing. By 
vanilla I meant 'plain'. Kinna like a plain ice-cream, if you say plain, you 
get vanilla? Maybe :) *grins*

>even that was beyond me!
It's not as scarey as it sounds, there is quite a useful HOWTO at and there is 
plenty of documentation that comes with it. It boils pretty much down to 
downloading, then extracting the source:

tar -xzf linux-2.4.21.tar.gz

and typing the following commands.

cd linux
make menuconfig
make bzImage
make modules
make modules_install

And them copying the file 
/where/you/compiled/your/kernel/arch/i386/boot/bzImage to somewhere useful 
like /boot/newkernel
And then adding a line in your /etc/lilo.conf pointing and running lilo
(Assuming you use lilo)

Whilst it is quite daunting at first, you can't *really* break anything, as 
long as you keep your old kernel handy just in case. And undoubtedly, you'll 
forget to compile loads of stuff you need to make your computer work (I 
forgot my IDE drivers once) but it's all part of the fun, and once you've 
made your own, you'll feel like a proper Guru :) Also, if you get stuck or 
have any questions, this is an area I think we will be able to help you with 
on the list, as most of us have had to recompile their kernel a good few 
times before!

Kind Regards,
	Philip