If you visit the Custom kernel article on the CentOS wiki, you will see lots of warnings including the fact custom kernels are not supported by CentOS. If in doubt, just mention “custom…” in the centos IRC channel, you would be told to go away (if you are lucky enough to not get banned :-D).

In the CentOS forums, things are a little more relaxed. After usual warnings, you will receive some (or even extensive) help. As someone put it in a recent post, “… but there are *some* situations, where it [custom kernel] is desirable (usage on notebooks with HW that’s not supported by native kernels – which is e.g. my case or curious minds of young and restless geeks etc. )”.

I am far from ‘young and restless’ and I am not a geek. However, I did compile the latest mainline kernel — in an attempt to help those encountering trouble with installing newer kernels. The error was “mount: could not find filesystem”. I could reproduce it on my CentOS system.

As always, Alan and Ned engaged their brains and we tried several things to find a solution. We were getting nowhere when vanecka posted a fix in this forum thread.

Fix:
Enable CONFIG_SYSFS_DEPRECATED_V2 in the kernel source configuration.
If you run “make menuconfig”, browse to:
General Setup —> enable deprecated sysfs features which may confuse old usersp, and enable this option.
—OR—
Edit your .config file with a text editor and add/modify entry:
CONFIG_SYSFS_DEPRECATED_V2=y

Genius! If you are interested in learning more details about this option, head for this web page.