Custom Kernel with CentOS

     Custom kernel in CentoOS is highly unrecommended by the CentOS team. I don't know the reason. They may want you to rely on them all the day or may be because of some security issues. But Linux is not an End User Operation System. And Linux users (can be called as Hackers sometimes) don't always following rules and recommendations. Sometimes won't even read them.

     I am using CentOS-5.8, which is running Linux-2.6.18 kernel. I want to install 2.6.35 kernel in that. I downloaded the source and did make menuconfig, make and make install. Everything went well and entry has been added in /boot/grub/menu.lst. But when I was booting with that kernel, it showed an error mount: could not find filesystem like this. The solution is very simple. Just enable CONFIG_SYSFS_DEPRECATED_V2.

#make menuconfig

Set "General Setup —> enable deprecated sysfs features". Or after doing make menuconfig, open .config file and grep for CONFIG_SYSFS_DEPRECATED_V2. Then replace that line with CONFIG_SYSFS_DEPRECATED_V2=y. And now build the kernel as usual.

#make

#make modules

#make modules_install

#make install

 Reboot with the newly installed kernel.