weird kernel upgrade problem

[Ralph Houben <ralph houben ntlworld com>]

hi and HNY to you all :)

i'm kinda new to the 2.4.x series kernels
since i only a few week ago moved from Zoot
to Enigma.

my problem is as follows, as soon as i
make and build my kernel from 2.4.17 src,
i install it and build it succesfully,
but the new kernel upon reboot does not work
properly. i've setup syslog to output some
of the syslog data on tty12. when syslog
starts at reboot it cannot find /dev/tty12
neither can it find /dev/tty0 wich i think
is really strange. it says "no such file or
directory". it cannot mount /dev/hda3 (my
swap partition) either. i tried re-routing the
kernel messages in syslog.conf to hopefully
gain some more insight of everything with:

kernel.*   /var/log/kernel

but this attempt was unsuccessfull. syslog
upon reboot did not log anything at all.
(i think i should add a bit more to that and
hopefully that might provide you with some more
information about this problem but for now
the info is pretty vague. sorry :(  )

after the machine "boots" it comes to the point
where its supposed to switch to the login-screen
but it then comes up with the error about LD and
numbers 1 thru 5 and says they are disabled for
5 minutes. after that i cannot do anything
anymore but press ctrl+alt+del to reboot back
to my orignal kernel.

i heave searched the News groups archives of
google for a solution but no joy :(

have i missed some driver / modules in the
kernel config somewhere maybe? and if so,
wich one would you guys think it is?...

the current installed kernel (out of the
box kernel by redhat 2.4.7-10) works normally
without any problems. the reason i want a newer
kernel is to try and "read out" my olympus 860l
digital camera.

i am not sure if this has something to do
with the problem aswell but i cant seem to
be able to compile any program successfully
yet the same software works brilliantly on
my other harddisk with zoot (6.2) and 2.2.19
kernel. (i think this is some kind of library
problem of some sort because it cannot find
many libraries wich according to rpm are
installed)

i do not know if it is this list the right
list to wich i should address this issue or
the kernel.org list. if its the wrong list,
then please tell me so that i can mail them.

greetings,

ralph