Those of you who have ever thought of compiling your own kernel must have googled how to do it
and may have read warnings like:

"Compiling the Linux Kernel is like playing with fire"

Well, two years of linux usage and my urge to learn more motivated me to compile the kernel, though warnings like above always made me think again. So I almost always thought of it but could never go ahead with it.

But things changed when i decided to install Gentoo from stage 1 and i almost surely knew that i could do nothing to avoid kernel compilation but do it. So what was on my mind:

"Oh dear, Why this moment had to come" :P

but then again if i wanted to build a custom system, i had to. So i went ahead and tried to customize my kernel's .config file according to my needs. Here was the time of truth, i compiled it and went for reboot with the new kernel and i was anxiously waiting whether what i did went right or not??

and YAY it did. I couldn't possibly tell you how great i felt at that time but it was an awesome feeling. That boosted my confidence and i went for more customization of my kernel and removing things which i certainly didnt need.It all went fine till i decided to rebuilt my Slackware kernel too.

Having a reiserfs as my root and /home partition meant i need to compile it right into kernel and not as a module, but silly me i did just the opposite and tried to boot the new kernel and thats when i saw the message:

Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs

for once i wasnt able to figure out where did i went wrong but then later i realized what silly mistake i made.

Sincerely, before this whenever i saw my friends compiling kernel and talking about kernel panic, i thought it was something that could possibly cause disruption to computer hardware and it was one more reason that kept me away.hehe i know how silly i sound but thats the way it is :)

Anyways been there done that, i suppose now i am thinking of upgrading my kernel to the stable release of 2.6-24-3. I will post sometime later how it went. for the time being i would rather go and study for my exam tomorrow.