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February 22, 2004
Corn Kernels
I actually managed to compile a 2.6.3 kernel for my Linux box.
laura@sophia:~$ uname -a
Linux sophia 2.6.3.20040222 #1 Sun Feb 22 02:34:03 CST 2004 i686 GNU/Linux
Yippee!
It only took..um...4 tries. Not understanding all of the configuration options can be a real bear. Here's what I learned:
1. Don't enable framebuffer support unless you really, truly need to. I enabled it, not understanding what it was, and my monitor would turn off just as the kernel started to boot. Made it a little hard to figure out the problem. I even tried to log in with the monitor off so I could ssh in from my XP box. That didn't work so I assume that it didn't boot to a prompt. Fortunately I had a boot disk from a previous attempt.
2. Damn POS video card. Never buy a crappy SiS PCI video card. Yea, it was 20 bucks but it took me a long time to figure out how to get it set up.
3. Intel Etherfast Pro 100, and other Intel network cards, hide out under Ethernet (10 or 100Mbit) ---> EISA, VLB, PCI and on board controllers. I went with the e100, but there's also eepro100.
Well I hope that helps someone...here's hoping the machine doesn't start smoking!
Posted by Laura at February 22, 2004 03:14 PM