[Techtalk] why is my kernel so big???

[Dave North]

miriam:
> i've recompiled... taken nearly everything out... and im
> still getting this message:
>
> Root device is (3, 5)
> Boot sector 512 bytes.
> Setup is 4776 bytes.
> System is 838kB
>
> is it possible that my boot sector is too small?....

I don't think so...

> still not sure why lilo wont be happy with this one... i'm still getting
> Fatal: Kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.5.1 is too big

Very strange, but then, so is Mandrake.
	Since I had 8.2 lying around, I took my kernel source and
config (2.4.18 from kernel.org) that works fine on debian, suse, redhat
and gentoo and stuck it on my mandrake partition, built it, and ran lilo.
	The good news is, lilo ran fine. This makes me suspect that the
usual hacked-to-death kernel mandrake ships (you are using their source?)
and enigmatic config files do something weird that lilo just doesn't like
very much.
	Never seen that complaint before, but the first line looks
suspiciously grub-like.
	The bad news is, the resultant kernel hangs. Why? I don't even
know where, since Mandrake so kindly includes the playskool startup screen
that doesn't allow me to watch the progress of the kernel. That may or may
not be a problem, since the screen never appears.
	In past experience, trying to set up mandrake on a vaio laptop
turned out to be literally impossible due to broken pcmcia yenta crap they
put in 8.1 ...
	So. I don't know if this helps at all, reallly. I can build a
kernel that lilo is happy with, but it won't run!
	If I actually liked mandrake, I'd probably be more upset. But this
is just another in a long string of "oh wells" I've addressed at that
"distro" of "linux."

d