troubles building kernel

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Actually, I was booting with LINLOAD (first i boot dos, then i use
LINLOAD to boot FC3. Seems to work great. FWIW: the actual name of the
initrd file appears to be irrelevent, but i did need the newly-generated 
initrd.

The puzzle seems to be coming together! thanks for all everyone's help and
suggestions.

One thing still bugs me -- and this relates to the EXTRAVERSION string
in the Makefile.
It seems to me that I should be able to build
an EXACT replica of anything, in this case the kernel, yet I can't achieve 
that.
I know this is sort of an arbitrary goal, but by doing so it would in my 
mind
validate the process. I.e. it would mean I used *exactly* all the same 
settings, and
source code and compiler versions, etc.
I'll have a look at the "Kernel Compilation Tutorial"... thanks.

> So, you were pointing GRUB at the new kernel and old initrd and it
> wasn't working?  Making the new initrd seems like the right thing to
> do, but it also would make sense if the old one did work.  If you want
> to experiment some, maybe try copying the old initrd to
> initrd-2.6.9-prep and seeing if maybe the name matters....
>

>  Here is an example
> of how to customize the .config file and rebuild the src.rpm:
> http://crab-lab.zool.ohiou.edu/kevin/kernel-compilation-tutorial-en/