Booting with different kernels -- what am I missing?

[Stephen Clower]

Doug Southerland writes,
"When the kernel boots it tries to find
its needed modules in /lib/modules, and they won't be there."

Is this why I'm unable to even access network devices when I try running a 2.4.26 kernel on Slackware 9.1?




*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 5/19/2004 at 6:23 PM Doug Sutherland wrote:

>> I thought that the kernel was independent from the software
> > running on a particular machine.
>
>Considering that the kernel provides access to all of the
>hardware, this not true. The hardware drivers are a moving
>target, drivers change, and methods change. For example there
>is the old method of using mknod for devices, then there was
>devfs, in the future there will be udev.
>
> > I know that a person runs some distribution, then often
> > downloads later kernel source, recompiles it and everything
> > is fine.
>
>Yep.
>
> > I thought I'd start by doing something simpler. I simply tried
> > to boot Slackware 8 with a speakup-enabled slackware 9 kernel
>
>This almost never works. The loadable kernel modules won't match
>along with other stuff. When the kernel boots it tries to find
>its needed modules in /lib/modules, and they won't be there.
>
> > tried to use a slackware 8 boot disk after I'd installed 9.1
> > on my hard disk. In both cases, I couldn't boot. I got a kernel
> > panic (which speakup read fine.) Why?
>
>You should be able to boot a slack9.1 system with a slack8 boot
>disk, provided you specify something like this at the first prompt
>
>mount root=/dev/hda2 ro
>
>You need to specify your root partition.
>I noticed that the command to do this changed in the 9.x series,
>I think you now need to specify noinitrd or something like that,
>read the BOOTING.TXT file in slackware, and the boot disk will
>usually say something like this: you can boot your linux system
>in a pinch by doing this (follow those instructions). I guess its
>a chicken and egg scenario since linux isn't loaded yet so no
>speakup.
>
>   -- Doug
>
>
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Stephen Clower, that guy from the south.
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