Could it be that the swap default space (5MB) is too small for compiling
a kernel with a 4 MB machine. I tried a first kernel build this
afternoon on a 386SX 4MB and when I came back after several hours the machine seemed to be dead - login from outside was not possible (telnet hung also).
This happened during the compilation of tty.c .
Is it possible to increase the swap space simply by swapping to a file (swapon)?