I had no problems with a kernel build (4-28-03 release)

1. d/l the kernel source (linux-2.4.20.tar.gz)
2. Extracted it into my home dir.
3. Logged out and then logged in as root.
4. Copied src tree to /usr/src, i.e. (/usr/src/linux-2.4.20)
5. Deleted old symlink to /usr/src/linux
6. Made new one ln -s /usr/src/linux-2.4.20 /usr/src/linux
7. Applied patches (I was trying the preemptible kernel patch)
8. Renamed ../../linux.2.4.20 ../../linux-2.4.20pre
9. cd /usr/src/linux; cp ../linux-2.4.20-xfs/.config .config
10. make xconfig - I enabled kernel preemption and included ReiserFS in
kernel (these are just examples)
11. edit Makefile and change EXTRAVERSION= to EXTRAVERSION=pre
11. make dep; make clean
12. make bzImage
13. make modules
14. make modules_install
15. mv /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/bzImage-2.4.20pre
16. mv /usr/src/linux/System.map /boot/System.map-2.4.20
17. ln -sf /boot/System.map-2.4.20 /boot/System.map
18. add image to lilo.conf
19. Reboot