Using a kernel image from -current?
 

I installed Slackware using the test26.s kernel found on the CD, followed up by installing the alsa-driver, kernel-modules, and kernel-source for 2.6.13 found on the second installation disc. Recently I tried to recompile my kernel for SMP and HIGHMEM following shilo's guide, but I obviously did something wrong. Ended up not being able to boot the new image, and messing up the other's modules in the process. :(

So apparently the kernel is still too advanced for me. However, it's irritating that I have a dual-core Opteron and 2GB of RAM that aren't being utilized. Does anyone know if the kernels found in -current have SMP and HIGHMEM enabled? And if so, how would one go about installing them on a running system?

AFAIK, those options are still unset.

Have you tried using the .config file from a working kernel and just changing the two options you need? I can't remember if Shilo's docs talk about using an existing .config file or not. If not, maybe this will help.
http://www.slackware.com/~alien/doku...kernelbuilding

(Trust me, you're not the only one who ever builds broken kernels. Give it another shot...)

Pat uses a generic config and even in the latest in -current, which is 2.6.17.7 or 2.6.16.27, highmem is not enabled and the CPU is set to 486 with SMP disabled.

Perhaps you should look at DaOne's 2.6.x guide.

That looks like a really good guide. Not that shilo's isn't great, I just don't think it's geared to what I'm needing to do. Since my /home is on a different partition, I might just start clean and give those instructions a run. I just got frustrated because the night before I had installed Doom 3, Quake 4, Neverwinter Nights, and UT2K4 (those games being the reason I wanted slack to use my second CPU and all my RAM).

Ah well. My second hard drive I use for Slackware is 250GB, and doesn't yet use anywhere near that amount. Maybe I'll install twice and have a testbed, and make the changes on my main one once I know it works.

I keep hearing about using a pre-made .config, but for some reason, I have never been able to get Pat's .config to work on any of my machines. No matter how many times I went though it to see what I missed, it would still fail to boot. This is probably no ones fault but my own, but I always had to do a 'make distclean' and start fresh. Sorry if this is off topic, but maybe it could help (I added in himem support into my kernel as well).

regards,
...drkstr