I notice there's an "rpm" target in the Makefile, which seems broken under RH 8.0. This may also apply to some "bleeding-edge" versions of Mandrake and Suse. Specifically, RH "split" the RPM build process into a separate utility from the old style rpm command. This could be fixed with a few aliases to keep backwards compatibility a bit easier. I wonder why an RH install doesn't already do this?
The reason why I'm sending this is because it's in the Makefile itself. If it wasn't for that, I'd just use the aliases mentioned above.
--- /usr/src/linux-2.4.19/Makefile 2002-12-15 19:04:20.000000000 -0500
+++ /home/pete/Makefile.new 2002-12-17 04:36:49.000000000 -0500
@@ -567,5 +567,16 @@
rm $(KERNELPATH) ; \
cd $(TOPDIR) ; \
. scripts/mkversion > .version ; \
- rpmbuild -ta $(TOPDIR)/../$(KERNELPATH).tar.gz ; \
+
+# RedHat split the RPM build process into a separate
+# utility called "rpmbuild", leading to a broken
+# "make rpm" target in the kernel Makefile;
+# this patch fixes that.
+
+ if [ `rpm --version | cut -b 12-15 | tr -d .` -ge '41' ] ;
+ then
+ rpmbuild -ta $(TOPDIR)/../$(KERNELPATH).tar.gz ; \
+ else
+ rpm -ta $(TOPDIR)/../$(KERNELPATH).tar.gz ; \
+ fi ; \
rm $(TOPDIR)/../$(KERNELPATH).tar.gz
