Not at all! First, you need either the complete Shipping the source takes a bit more space, but it also means that you can refer to the actual kernel sources in case of difficulty or to further your understanding of what's Once you have the cd /usr/src/sys/i386/conf cd ../../compile/MYKERNEL

Step 2 may not be necessary if you already have a kernel configuration file from a previous release of FreeBSD 2.X. - simply bring your old one over and check it carefully for any drivers that may have changed boot syntax or been rendered obsolete.

A good kernel config file to look into is If you don't need to make any changes to /kernel and /kernel.old! It's very important to remember this in case the new kernel fails to work for some reason - you can still select /kernel.old at the boot prompt to boot the old one. When you reboot, the new kernel will boot by default.

If the compile in step 7 falls over for some reason, then it's recommended that you start from step 4 but substitute Finally, if you need to see your original boot messages again to compile a new kernel that's better tailored to your hardware, try the command. It should print out all the boot-time messages printed by your old kernel, some of which may be quite helpful in configuring the new one.

My kernel compiles fail because

Let me guess. You removed from your kernel configuration file because you don't have a math co-processor, right? Wrong! :-) The Interrupt conflicts with multi-port serial code.

# # Multiport high-speed serial line - 16550 UARTS # device sio2 at isa? port 0x2a0 tty irq 5 flags 0x501 vector siointr device sio3 at isa? port 0x2a8 tty flags 0x501 vector siointr device sio4 at isa? port 0x2b0 tty flags 0x501 vector siointr device sio5 at isa? port 0x2b8 tty flags 0x501 vector siointr How do I enable support for QIC-40/80 drives?

You need to uncomment the following line in the generic config file (or add it to your config file), add a `` line and recompile. controller fdc0 at isa? port "IO_FD1" bio irq 6 drq 2 flags 0x1 vector fdintr disk fd0 at fdc0 drive 0 ^^^^^^^^^ disk fd1 at fdc0 drive 1 #tape ft0 at fdc0 drive 2 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Next, you create a device called /dev/ft0 by going into /dev and run the following command: sh ./MAKEDEV ft0

for the first device. You will have a device called /dev/ft0, which you can write to through a special program to manage it called `` for further details.

Versions previous to /usr/src/sbin/ft in