First time Kernel build Blues

[Mike Bushroe]

My copy of Ubuntu was becoming unstable. First it would not read a CD-ROM,
then it would not read a USB flash drive. In both cases, it claimed the file
system was unknown. So I tried using modprobe to add iso9660 and vfat back
into the OS, only to find that modprobe was missing. So I tried to rebuild
the dependencies files by using depmode, and that could not find the needed
files and folders. And suddenly the printer was no longer accessable.

So I decided to bite the bullet and try making a new kernel in hopes of
restoring the lost modprobe. I found Howto's and used a simple one for
building 2.6 kernels. I went to Kernel.Org and downloaded the latest stable
Kernel 2.6.32 source. And then after several false starts I was able to get
make menuconfig to work. I got pretty lost in many of the options and sub
menus, but trimmed out some of the fat getting rid of Ham radio, file
systems I have never heard of, wireless functions, and a few other. Then
came mkinitrd. There is no mkinitrd. I can not apt-get install mkinitrd. I
can not use the Ubuntu main menu download and install to get mkinitrd. I
Googled it and saw some refernces to initrd-tools, but the only version I
could find was labeld as _only_ for customizing a new LIVE-CD, and it also
conflicted with already loaded apps. I found mkinitrd in RPMs, but has no
idea how to make use of an RPM file in Ubuntu. I looked for mkinitrd source,
and could not find that either. I found one package that I extracted to my
~/Downloads, but it had no configure file, and running make on the included
Make_file died quickly with errors. Yet when I looked at /boot, there were
initrd-x.y.z-.image files for all the previous versions Ubuntu updates have
loaded, so it looked essential.

    I finally edited /grub/menu.lst to add the new kernel, but used the most
recent image file for the initial ramdisk install phase. But the boot failed
and I had to fall back to the most recent upgrade performed through Ubuntu.


Can anbody tell me where I went wrong? How I am supposed to make the
initrd-image which appears to be critical? Or does Ubuntu just plain not
allow home-rolled kernels?


Mike
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