How/when is the post-install kernel generated? Or, is there a generic pre-compiled kernel somewhere on the installation that's used for all platforms? If it's a generic kernel used for all platforms, is there a .config file somewhere that was used to generate this kernel? I have a special box with limited devices and low memory: Cyrix CPU (pentium 166) 32MB memory (some models only 16MB or 8MB) 3-5GB disk ethernet card with boot ROM VGA no CD no floppy no mouse no battery for clock I've converted the RH7.1 bootnet image into a bootp image and I'm able to start the installation process using bootp. My ks.cfg file does a clean install using nfs and everything works fine. The problem comes when I reboot the box for the first time (at the end of the install) and boot the kernel. It get's to the point where /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit is running, just after mounting /proc then hangs. I've tracked it down to where it's running /sbin/hwclock. Rebooting with "linux init=/bin/bash" let me get in and manually run /sbin/hwclock with --debug and it appears the RTC never responds. I've discovered that if I rebuild the kernel with just the right settings (and I haven't tracked down all the right settings yet), I can get it to boot just fine. When I started to compare stuff between my custom kernel and the post-install kernel, I noticed the RTC driver is missing in my custom kernel. Running /sbin/hwclock ... --debug shows: hwclock 2.4c/util-linux-2.10s hwclock: Open of /dev/rtc failed, errno=19: No such device. Using direct I/O instructions to ISA clock. Assuming hardware clock is kept in UTC time. Waiting for clock tick... ... got clock tick <and continues fine and does it's job> Doing "cat /proc/driver/rtc" fails with: cat: /proc/driver/rtc: No such file or directory Which makes sense since the driver is not available. Running /sbin/hwclock ... --debug on the post-install kernel shows: hwclock 2.4c/util-linux-2.10s Using /dev/rtc interface to clock. Assuming hardware clock is kept in UTC time. Waiting for clock tick... At this point it just hangs. Doing "cat /proc/driver/rtc" shows: rtc_time : 00:03:09 rtc_date : 1988-01-01 rtc_epoch : 1900 alarm : 00:00:00 DST_enable : yes BCD : yes 24hr : yes square_wave : no alarm_IRQ : no update_IRQ : no periodic_IRQ : no periodic_freq : 1024 batt_status : dead All this is a bit beside the point, which is, how can I generate a custom kernel which is used the first time the box is booted after the install?? And, is there a .config file associated with the post-install kernel?
