'Aggressive' Kernel ?

[Keith Adney]

Hi. A brief background to give all an idea of where I'm at, and I'll 
try to be less verbose in the future. I'll also try and keep to one 
topic per post when possible, but at this stage I'm not really sure 
what is interacting with what.

I've been fooling with computers since 1977, was VP of MIS for a 
large transportation company (mainframe) for a decade (the 1980s 
decade); I've probably written close to 100K lines of COBOL in my 
life. I quite literally used to write COBOL in my dreams. I'm a 
hi-time Windows user; I've been fooling with Linux for about a year 
now, mainly Mandrake, although I've played with about 3 or 4 other 
distros, as well. Of course, I've been dual-booting.

About 3 weeks ago I tried the "don't boot Windows for a month" test 
after Bill Gates ate 2 wks worth of email AGAIN. I guess I failed; 
I couldn't go a month. I removed the Windows partition about a week 
ago.  ;)

I now have Mandrake 9.0 installed as my 'primary' O/S (running it to 
write this). I researched distros pretty heavily, and it appears 
that the SGL branch has exactly the characteristics I'm looking for 
in a Linux distro, and that Lunar is the least politically infected 
fork of the SGL branch (PLEASE correct me if Im wrong here). I hope 
Lunar will soon be my primary O/S.

Enough of that.

I have a 350 MHz P2 w/448MB mem, 10GB HD, no-name GeoForce2 MX400 
video, local LAN w/3 other stations, including my laptop, behind a 
Mandrake SNF firewall to a cable modem (a terrific firewall using a 
60MHz P1 w/32MB ;). I've given Lunar a 1-cylinder boot partition 
(1st cyl is Mandrake /boot at hda1; 2nd is Lunar /boot at hda2, 
Mandrake root is hda5, Lunar has a single root partition of about 
4GB at hda6, and yes I realize that's tight). I configured a 1GB 
SWAPFILE in the root partition. I also have a 1.5GB HD; I'm using 
256MB for the Mandrake swap partition and the rest is a 
/home/shared partition for common storage w/Mandrake. If anyone 
thinks its a better way I could always put the swapfile on that 
drive (but I assume it has to be a swap FILE, within a partition, 
not a PARTITION, as Mandrake would try to use it if it was a 
partition?). That would give Lunar another 1GB+ in its root 
partition.

I've installed Lunar via CD-ROM about 5 or 6 times now. The initial 
install and kernel compile always go fine, but at the end I'm 
always left with an "aggressive" kernel, ie, 
"vmlinubz-2.4.20-r1-aggressive" (that is from memory, might not be 
verbatim but I imagine y'all get the idea). It boots fine, but when 
I try to load my NIC module (vanilla NIC which uses the tulip 
driver and runs fine w/Mandrake), it tells me that the tulip driver 
was compiled for a vanilla kernel, but I'm using an aggressive 
kernel...

I've fooled w/Linux for some time now, but as most of it is on 
Mandrake, I've never actually compiled a kernel. ;) I assume I'm 
incorrectly setting or resetting some option in the kernel config 
screens, but I have no idea what option(s). Each time I've tried to 
be more and more "conservative" (as *I* see it!) in my option 
selections, but the end result's always the same: I can't load my 
NIC and therefore can't do much except play with bash.

Would it help if I listed all the kernel compile options I selected, 
or is this a no-brainer for someone who knows Lunar? I'm assuming 
the latter...

What filesystems are required? I'm using (trying, anyway ;) reiserfs 
on my root partitions, and on /home/shared; /boot is ext2. I've 
deselected most of the filesystems I don't use; at boot time I seem 
to be getting messages complaining about an inability to read a 
UMSDOS partition; there are no DOS or Windows partitions on the 
drive (and I'm certainly not booting from a Windows partition). It 
also is complaining about missing the UFS filesystem. I'm not 
trying to fix all this at once (or I'd quit being lazy and go get 
some logs from the Lunar partition), but as I said earlier, I don't 
know what's interacting with what. Am I removing an fs that makes 
the kernel compile 'aggressively'? And, BTW, WTH is an 'aggressive' 
kernel, anyway? Is it gonna make a pass at my Mandrake install? ;) 
It can *have* any of my Windows CDs, to do with as it pleases...I'm 
quite excited about this distro, if I can just get it running.

Blue Skies, and TIA...Keith Adney