First Successful Kernel Compilation

During the past four years in college made many unsuccessful attempts in compiling the Linux kernel. May be i did not make any serious attempts till now. Anyway at last compiled the Linux kernel successfully today. A server in college was fitted with QLA2312 fibre optic card and the kernel being old did not have the driver. So we started with the job of compiling the latest linux kernel 2.6.21.3 and it helped in finding where i went wrong during the past. I have seen seniors compiling kernel without initrd or initial RAM disk. So i was trying to do the same. initrd is not required as long as the kernel contains support for the hard disk and other devices inbuilt and not as a module. This time we tried with creating initrd, and we were successful. Still the task of compiling the kernel without creating initrd, remains. That would be the next task.