On the Intel x86 platform, the v2.6 kernel compiles straight from the official source without a hitch. This isn’t so on the Itanium and Opteron platforms. While support for these platforms is present in the kernel, patches from specific platform development efforts are required to compile v2.6. The Itanium (IA-64) patches I used are available at http://spegill.linux.is/linux/kernel/ports/ia64/v2.6/, and the Opteron (x86_64) patches are available at ftp://ftp.x86-64.org /pub/linux-x86_64/v2.6. These patches were required for a successful build and boot of the v2.6.0 kernel on these architectures. Once built, the kernel boots normally, but requires the updated mkinitrd and modutils packages to fully function. Without the v2.6 compliant versions of these utilities, the new kernel object modules will not be built into the initrd, and modules will not be able to be inserted into the v2.6 kernel.