I'll say right from the start, that building a new kernel, has always been a problem for me. I don't remember ever not having a problem, in 10+ yrs..
Many people here seem to find it completely easy... not me. So I'm back in the soup. [I hope what I try to layout below is not overly confusing] (After install of gentoo-sources-2.6.31-r4) I started with `make oldconfig' Moved from that to `make menuconfig' Trying to mimic all the needed drivers in current running kernel. But, On the first build and reboot, I got `kernel panic' So by now I've rebuilt the kernel 4 times, each time trying to get the new one to have all the needed drivers that are present in the old one, but still getting `kernel panic'. I tried closely comparing the current working kernel with newly built one. I mean side by side with `make menuconfig' running in both sources. I cannot tell what it is I'm overlooking. I copied the latest output painfully off the boot screen, and best I can make of it, a driver required to let the kernel recognize the filesystem that / is on, is not getting loaded. I think its one of PIIX items. The thing is, I cannot find the culprit. For example, examining the PIIX items in the working kernel and inserting here: zgrep PIIX /proc/config.gz CONFIG_BLK_DEV_PIIX=y CONFIG_ATA_PIIX=m CONFIG_PATA_MPIIX=y # CONFIG_PATA_OLDPIIX is not set CONFIG_I2C_PIIX4=m Try the same thing on the newbuild: grep PIIX /usr/src/linux/.config CONFIG_BLK_DEV_PIIX=y CONFIG_ATA_PIIX=m CONFIG_PATA_MPIIX=y # CONFIG_PATA_OLDPIIX is not set CONFIG_I2C_PIIX4=m So maybe it is not even related to PIIX.... But let me insert the kernel messages from a failed boot here: (I've numbered the lines from the bad boot output so as not confuse them with the good boot messages from kernel 2.6.30-r1 ------- --------- ---=--- --------- -------- >From Kernel 2.6.31-r4 1 hda: ST3160021A, ATA DISK drive 2 hdb: WDC SE3000JB-00KFA0, ATA DISK drive 3 hda: UDMA/100 mode selected 4 hdb: UDMA/100 mode selected 5 hdc: LITE-ON CD-ROM LTN-5291s, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive 6 hdd: WDC WD16000JB-00EVA0, ATA DISK drive 7 hdc: UDMA/33 mode selected 8 hdd: UDMA/100 mode selected 9 IDE0 at 0x1f0-0X1f7,0X3f6 on irg 14 10 IDE0 at 0x170-0X177,0X376 on irg 15 ------- --------- ---=--- --------- -------- NOTE: Comparing a similar section of dmesg from working kernel 2.6.30-r1 Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver piix 0000:00:1f.1: IDE controller (0x8086:0x24db rev 0x02) PIIX_IDE 0000:00:1f.1: enabling device (0005 -> 0007) ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKC] enabled at IRQ 10 PCI: setting IRQ 10 as level-triggered PIIX_IDE 0000:00:1f.1: PCI INT A -> Link[LNKC] -> GSI 10 (level, low) -> IRQ 10 piix 0000:00:1f.1: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later ide0: BM-DMA at 0xfc00-0xfc07 ide1: BM-DMA at 0xfc08-0xfc0f ** The part above, I think is where a piix driver is loaded or something (these messages from working kernel 2.6.30-r1) Probing IDE interface ide0... Switched to high resolution mode on CPU 0 hda: ST3160021A, ATA DISK drive hdb: WDC WD3000JB-00KFA0, ATA DISK drive hda: host max PIO4 wanted PIO255(auto-tune) selected PIO4 hda: UDMA/100 mode selected hdb: host max PIO4 wanted PIO255(auto-tune) selected PIO4 hdb: UDMA/100 mode selected Probing IDE interface ide1... hdc: LITE-ON CD-ROM LTN-5291S, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive hdd: WDC WD1600JB-00EVA0, ATA DISK drive hdc: host max PIO4 wanted PIO255(auto-tune) selected PIO4 hdc: UDMA/33 mode selected hdd: host max PIO4 wanted PIO255(auto-tune) selected PIO4 hdd: UDMA/100 mode selected [...] snipped the rest of dmesg ouput from running kernel 2.6.30.1 ------- --------- ---=--- --------- -------- (continuation of messages from failed boot of kernel-2.6.31-r4 11 ide_generic: please use "probe_mask=0x3f" module parameters for probing all legacy IS IDE ports 12 ide-cd driver 5.00 13 ide cd:hdc: ATAPI 52X CD-ROM drive 96kB Cache 14 Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.10 15 Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Driver version - 7.3.21-k3-NAPI 16 Copyright (c) 1999-2006 Intel Corporation 17 e1000e: Intel(R) Pro/1000 Network Driver, 1.0.2-k2 18: e1000e: Copyright(c) 1999-2008 Intel Corporation 19: e100: Intel (R) PRO/100 Network Driver 3.5.24-k-NAPI 20: e100: Copyright blah blah 21: sky2 driver version 1.23 22: r8169 Gigabit Ethernet driver 2.3LK-NAPI loaded 23: r8169 0000:02:03:0: PCI INT A -> GSI 19 (level,low) -> IRQ 19 24: r8169 0000:02:03:0: no PCI Experss capability 25: eth0 RTL8110s at 0xf8026f00, 00:40:f4:b5:29:41, XID 04000000 IRQ 20 26: r8169 Gigabit Ethernet driver 2.3LK-NAPI loaded 27: r8169 0000:02:06:0: PCI INT A -> GSI 20 (level,low) -> IRQ 20 28: r8169 0000:02:06:0: no PCI Experss capability 29: eth1 RTL8110s at 0xf802ae00, 00:11:09:ee:6c:04, XID 04000000 IRQ 20 30: PnP: PS/2 Controller [PNP0303:PS2K] at 0x60,0x64 IRQ 1 31: PnP: PS/2 appears to have AUX port disabled, if this bla bla 32: serio: i8042 KBD port at 0x60,0x64 IRQ 1 33: mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice 34: cupidle: using governors ladder 35: cpuidle: using governor menu 36: TCP cubic registered 37: NET: Registered protocol family 17 38: RPC: Registered udp transport module 39: RPC: Registered udp transport module 40: Using IPI No-Shortcut mode 41: input: AT Translated Set 2 keyboard as /devices/platform/i8042/serio0/input/input2 42: ROOT-NFS: No NFS server available, giving up. 43: VFS: Unable to mount root fs via NFS, trying floppy 44: VFS: Cannot open root device "hda5" or unknown-block(2.0) 45: Please append a correct "root=" boot option - here are the available partitions: 46: 1600 419302 hdc driver: ide-cdrom 47: kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(2.0) 48: Pid: 1: comm: swappers Not tainted 2.6.31-gentoo-r4_rdr-2 #3 49: Call Trace: 50: [<c130cd18>] ? printk+0xf/0x17 51: [<c130cc6e>] panic+0x39/0xd4 [There were several more lines here]