question regarding lilo.conf

[Rick Garland]

Hi all:

Making plans to rebuild a kernel on RH 6.0 to add an Adaptec 2940 UW SCSI card for backup. Presently, no SCSI devices on the system.

The question I have is that this is a production mail gateway. I have another RH6.0 system with something different in the lilo.conf. The production lilo.conf file does not have the initrd=/boot/initrd-2.2.5-15.img entry. Wanting to have a backup kernel to boot from if things do not go well.

Plans I have so far are:
(Sorry for the length)

To create and install automatically:
freshly generated kernel under /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/boot/zImage

make dep clean bzlilo modules modules_install

+ Perform dependency file generation
+ Clean sources
+ Create compressed kernel image
+ Copy /vmlinuz to vmlinuz.old and copy new zImage kernel into place
+ Build all modules and install them in /lib/modules/2.2.5-15

1> Backup new kernel source tree
+ cp /usr/src/linux /usr/src/linux.sav
2. backup kernel itself
+ cp /boot/vmlinuz-2.2.5-15 /boot/vmlinuz-2.2.5-15.sav
3. modify /etc/lilo.conf
boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.p
prompt
timeout=50
image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.2.5-15
label=linux
root=/dev/hda1
read-only

CHANGE TO:
image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.2.5-15.sav
label=linux.sav
root=/dev/hda1
read-only

run lilo to update

uname -v
tells you if the new kernel is in effect

use "xconfig" to do the initial configuration

linux kernel module commands
lsmod insmod rmmod depmod modprobe

to add a module:
insmod -v -o -k aic7xxx /lib/modules/2.2.5-15/scsi/aic7xxx.o

Do the above plans look good? Do I have a kernel saved in case I need to boot from it?

Many thanks to all! The help is greatly appreaciated!
Rick

[Albert E. Whale, CISSP · Accepted solution]

Rick,

I've built many a Kernel ... let's keep this Simple.

1. edit the /etc/lilo.conf and duplicate the structure currently in existence for the New Kernel. Make the new entry
name=linux-scsi
image=linuz-2.2.15.scsi

This will keep the current linux OS the default, until you are confident that this new kernel works ok.

2. make xconfig Add the Adaptec Controller to the kernel (don't make it a module, this will slow it's use down considerably)

3. make bzImage
4. make modules
5. make modules_install
6. Copy the New Kernel to the New Image location.

7. lilo -v (verbose mode will report any errors)

8. When all of the above works without an error you can reboot, and select the New OS you just compiled and verify that the Adaptec Controller is recognized (dmesg works really well for this).

Hope that helps.