Greetings,

If you would like to use the ext3 journalled filesystem on your WBL Duron system, I have successfully built and installed Linux 2.4.17 (which supports ext3) and the stuff needed to use ext3. ext3 is working on my system now. So if another electrician blows up the power panel, my filesystems won't get corrupted :-)

NOTE: Install this at your own risk. If this eats your hard disk, then tough luck, don't say I didn't warn you. All I can tell you is this kernel works fine on my system. If your server is really critical and/or you don't have adequate backups, then don't mess with the kernel. I will not be held responsible for any damage you might do to your server installing this. This is AT YOUR OWN RISK!
I also can't guarantee all the RackShack hardware is the same. Type 'lspci' and check that you have the SiS900 ethernet card. If you don't have a SiS card in your box, then although the kernel will boot, you won't have any networking. If you don't have an SiS900, then you'll have to build the kernel yourself - get it from www.kernel.org.
Also NOTE: This kernel DOES NOT support ipchains (legacy firewalling from the 2.2 kernel). Instead it supports iptables which is the up-to-date method of packet filtering. If you use ipchains, you'll have to change your rules to use iptables. There are HOWTO guides for this - do some Google searching to find them.

To get the kernel, on your server go somewhere where you want to put the tarball and:

wget http://vexed.alioth.net/~winston/linux-2.4...7-vexed2.tar.gz

Unpack the tarball with:
tar zxvf linux-2.4.17-vexed2.tar.gz

then go into the linux directory and type:
make install

This copies the new kernel image into your /boot directory.

Then edit /etc/lilo.conf and make it look like this:boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
prompt
timeout=50
message=/boot/message
linear
default=linux

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.17
label=linux
read-only
root=/dev/hda1

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.2-2
label=linux.old
read-only
root=/dev/hda1

NOTE: If it all goes pear-shaped, RackShack personnel can get on the console and type "linux.old" at the lilo prompt when rebooting to boot your original kernel.

Now type:
lilo

You'll see something like:
Added linux*
Added linux.old

which tells you Lilo successfully updated the boot record.

Then type "reboot".

The system should come back in ~3 minutes at the most. Log on and type:
uname -a

and you should see something similar to:
Linux vexed2.alioth.net 2.4.17 #2 Mon Dec 31 11:57:39 CST 2001 i686 unknown

If it reports 2.4.2-2 then you need to check /etc/lilo.conf; it's not pointing at the right image.

Now you've got a working 2.4.17 kernel, you can upgrade your filesystems to ext3. Go to this URL and carefully follow the instructions. Note: you do not need to upgrade the util-linux package. However, you DO need a new e2fsprogs package. I built mine from source and you can get mine (once again, use at your own risk!) by doing wget http://vexed.alioth.net/~winston/e2fsprogs...s-vexed2.tar.gz
Unpack with tar zxvf and go into the e2fsprogs-1.25/build directory and type make install as root to do the installation. It doesn't take long to compile, so if you want to do your own compilation, get the original tarball as directed by the ext3 mini-HOWTO.

Here's the ext3 mini-HOWTO:
http://www.symonds.net/~rajesh/howto/ext3/

If you DO decide to update util-linux (which wasn't necessary for me and the mini-HOWTO explains why) be sure to read all of the mini-HOWTO - it discusses a potential problem with util-linux on a RedHat system (which could stop your system from booting properly because the filesystems won't get mounted).

After following the ext3 mini-HOWTO, reboot and check the boot messages by typing:

dmesg|more

You'll see something like:
Linux version 2.4.17 (root@vexed2.alioth.net) (gcc version 2.96 20000731 (Red Hat Linux 7.1 2.96-85)) #2 Mon Dec 31 11:57:39 CST 2001
.
.

.
.
Journalled Block Device driver loaded
.
.
kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
VFS: Mounted root (ext3 filesystem) readonly.
Freeing unused kernel memory: 216k freed
Adding Swap: 265032k swap-space (priority -1)
EXT3 FS 2.4-0.9.16, 02 Dec 2001 on ide0(3,1), internal journal
kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3 FS 2.4-0.9.16, 02 Dec 2001 on ide0(3,5), internal journal
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
eth0: Media Link On 100mbps full-duplex

...and then you know it's all working :-)

Good luck.

Thanks for this new year gift, winston!

I've never compiled the kernel before so - is it safe to assume that all references to

/usr/home/winston

inside the .depend and .hdepend should be changed to the path that we've extraced your linux directory to?

Any other changes that should be made becasue of the different path? Please don't forget anything because I'm gonna try if it works!

Ales

<> just saw that there are more paths to change so it will be easier and safer to move the dir to /usr/home/winston. Trying this now, let's see if it will compile...

Keep us informed!

To rebuild the dependencies, just do:

make dep

and those dependency files will point to wherever they should do.
If you want to rebuild as well, just do a

make bzImage

and then

make install

to copy the kernel image to the boot directory (note: the kernel will only be booted after you've modified /etc/lilo.conf)

The main thing is that this kernel's already configured to run on the Duron boxes. If you want to change anything in the kernel, you can always do a make menuconfig and look at what's configured, change it, then do make dep/make bzImage/make install.