Victor Odhner wrote: > > Thanks, all -- I understand more now, but apparently not enough. > > I'm unable to set up a bootable disk, so one thing I did > was to create /dev/hda1 as a little /boot partition, which is > mounted onto /boot in the root partition. But still no luck. > All the details are listed below. > > Current problems: > > "LILO wasn't able to install" in the MBR. > [Q1] Any way to force this manually? > > LILO won't install in the root partition either, which is > understandable since that's not a valid boot sector. > > I can't create a boot disk that will use the image on the > hard disk. > > Questions: > 1. Why can't I install LILO? > 2. Why can't I create a boot disk? > 3. Is my root partition going to be too small? hmmm what is the size of your new kernel? I seem to remember something about size of the kernel causing troubles... Ahhh... here it is (from the readme in the /usr/linux/README - Do a "make bzImage" to create a compressed kernel image. If you want to make a boot disk (without root filesystem or LILO), insert a floppy in your A: drive, and do a "make bzdisk". It is also possible to do "make install" if you have lilo installed to suit the kernel makefiles, but you may want to check your particular lilo setup first. To do the actual install you have to be root, but none of the normal build should require that. Don't take the name of root in vain. - In the unlikely event that your system cannot boot bzImage kernels you can still compile your kernel as zImage. However, since zImage support will be removed at some point in the future in favor of bzImage we encourage people having problems with booting bzImage kernels to report these, with detailed hardware configuration information, to the linux-kernel mailing list and to H. Peter Anvin . I would try that... EBo --