Mandriva Kernel Compile Special Instructions Due to the way that Mandriva generates multiple versions of the kernel (uniprocessor, smp, enterprise, boot, secure), recompiling the kernel from the kernel source installed in /usr/src/linux *MUST* be preceded by one step: make mrproper This is roughly equivalent to "make distclean", but not quite. The best explanation of why this scenario exists appeared in the Cooker Mailing List by Andrey Borzenkov: PLEASE do not forget - you must not need to configure your kernel before you compile EXTERNAL module (as example, nVidia). PLEASE remember that Mandriva has 5 (five!) kernel flavours and you can compile external modules for any of them WITHOUT RECONFIGURATION IN BETWEEN. PLEASE look into this "regenrated files" in clean kernel-source and after you have reconfigured your kernel. To summarize, the kernel source tree is left in a state such that you compile custom kernel modules for any of the five versions of the kernel without having to do anything special. One of the side effects of this is that if you want to start a compile from scratch, you must remove various configuration files (as well as object files and binaries). To do this, you *MUST* do the "make mrproper" first. Regards, the Mandriva Team