[trev.h]

I am building a kernel for IDE RAID support on Mandrake 9.1. I have been removing things I don't need that are in the kernel (e.g. IrDA, Amateur Radio, ISDN ... ), the update date on the .config is current but the vmlinux
build file is not getting smaller (3.3Mb).

I have installed the source to /usr/src/linux-2.4.21-0.24mdk
I have created a symlink:
cd /usr/src
ln -s linux-2.4.21-0.24mdk linux

I then
cd linux
and do all the make commands from here:
make xconfig
make dep
make bzImage
make modules
make modules_install
cp vmlinux /boot/vmlinux

Then do LILO config

Am I missing a step? Perhaps a manual copy before the make(s)? Nothing in the Readme to suggest I have missed something.

Your assistance is much appreciated.
Trev.

[codejockey]

Seems like you are doing all the right things (with one possible oversight). Note that (on my slackware system) the newly-built kernel is usually in path-to-source/linux/arch/i386 and is named bzImage rather than vmlinuz. Is this the file you are comparing with /vmlinuz to determine if your changes have reduced its size? A newly-built kernel is usually installed with "make install", which appears to be missing from your steps -- but this may not apply to Mandrake.

Also, note that anything compiled as a module will not add to the size of the kernel, so removing unused features compiled as modules will not reduce your kernel size. Similarly, you should compile features in your new kernel as modules whenever possible to reduce size (note: do not compile support for your root filesystem type as a module).

You might also check your compile settings; using -g (for example) will greatly increase the size of your executable. Your 3.3 Mbytes is definitely a large kernel; for reference, my slackware 8.1 kernel (with a number of features enabled) is approximately 1.3 Mbytes.

Hope this helps.