Building SMP kernel
It was a surprise to me, that SMP needs APM turned off and RTC and even ERTC turned on… I have configured kernels for different servers even SMP ones but didn’t ever noticed this. A HOWTO is here.
Also, as a remark - Debian Etch has SELinux included, it is turned off but init depends on it -
server:~#ldd /sbin/init
linux-gate.so.1 => (0xffffe000)
libsepol.so.1 => /lib/libsepol.so.1 (0xb7f37000)
libselinux.so.1 => /lib/libselinux.so.1 (0xb7f22000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/tls/libc.so.6 (0xb7def000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib/tls/libdl.so.2 (0xb7deb000)
/lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0xb7f81000)
So pay attention and include SELinux support into kernel when building one for yourself…