[PLUG] Doh! Debian woody and kernel compilation

[Chris McNett]

I'm compiling PCMCIA support so I can use a wireless network card, and it
says that I need the NETLINK option in the kernel.  So I go, do make
modules and make modules_install, then I do make bzlilo.

Through some stroke of genius, I magically sense that upgrading to woody
screwed up my lilo.conf.  Fortunately, I backed up my lilo.conf to
lilo.conf.old before upgrading to woody.  By that time, make bzlilo had
already done /sbin/lilo, but I moved lilo.conf to lilo.conf.new and moved
lilo.conf.old to lilo.conf.  I ran /sbin/lilo and rebooted.

The problem?  It seems it didn't take into account my changes to
lilo.conf.  To complicate matters worse, I'm using a new version of lilo,
and pressing ALT takes me to some weird menu system which shows as my
only options:
2.2.18pre21
hda1
(I've got Windows Me installed on hda1.)

(On the old lilo system, it said Linux and LinuxOLD.  Maybe I just
imagined running /sbin/lilo?)

OK, so I just boot, fix lilo.conf, and run /sbin/lilo, right? Wrong.  My
new kernel doesn't boot.  I know I should have put it on a floppy first,
but I was lazy.  It gets into a runaway modprobe loop, complaining that it
can't create /var/log/ksymoops/20010427.log because the filesystem is
mounted read-only.  (Should the filesystem be mounted read-only?)

I can't boot off of the old kernel because it isn't on the "LILO Boot
Menu."  I have a syslinux disk from another debian box, but it gets into a
runaway modprobe loop because it can't find
/lib/modules/2.2.17/modules.dep.  (Obviously this doesn't work because I
have 2.2.18pre21 installed.  Unless I want to hexedit the kernel, that
boot disk doesn't work.)

I suppose I could boot off of Debian install disks, but then everything
would be in /target, making it hard to do stuff.  I suppose I could mess
with lilo like that, but is there an easier way?