[CentOS] should i (theoretically) be able to boot a "git clone"d kernel on 5.5?

  toward the end of a class on friday, just for fun, i showed the
students how to install git, clone the latest kernel source, and build
and install a new kernel.  since it was getting close to end of day, i
wanted to keep it simple and directed them to just "make defconfig" to
see what would happen.

  the configuration and build of the kernel and modules worked fine,
they installed the kernel and modules, then rebooted but the new
kernel panicked almost immediately, apparently whining that it
couldn't mount the root filesystem.  since they were all running
LVM-based systems, i assumed that perhaps we needed to explicitly add
LVM support during the config step.

  i'd still like to be able to build and boot a new kernel on an
updated centos box so, later today, i'm going to reinstall 5.5 on a
system without LVM (just define some fixed filesystems) to see if that
makes a difference.

  has anyone done this?  should i be able to?  to recap, all i want to
do on a fully-updated centos 5.5 box is

  * install the development tools
  * install git
  * clone the latest kernel repo
  * make defconfig
  * make
  * install new kernel and modules
  * reboot to new kernel

  i'm willing to accept that it won't be a perfect kernel and perhaps
some drivers will be missing, but at the very least, it should boot
without panicking.

  again, anyone else done this?  should it work?  i'll try this later
today as soon as i have access to my test system again.

rday

-- 

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Robert P. J. Day                               Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA
                        http://crashcourse.ca

Twitter:                                       http://twitter.com/rpjday
LinkedIn:                               http://ca.linkedin.com/in/rpjday
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