Novice needs advice building new kernel: UPG 4.7-RELEASE ---> 4.9-RELEASE

[Jeff Bogari]

Thanks in advance for the expert assistance:

I'm *halfway* knowledgeable with my 4.7-RELEASE system.  Built it on a
486/66 (16MB RAM) about a year ago.  It's time to upgrade to 4.9-RELEASE.
Here's what I've got so far:

1.  Set the options in sysinstall to retrieve 4.9-RELEASE instead of
    4.7-RELEASE
2.  Used sysinstall to download the 4.9-RELEASE data via FTP
3.  Tried to rebuild the kernel with the "first" process as documented
4.  All steps proceed without error
5.  Kernel size after last step is 0KB, so reboot fails.  Fallback to
    kernel.old
6.  GENERIC kernel installed with 4.9-RELEASE is kinda iffy - had to address
    several issues with 4.7 GENERIC to arrive at the kernel conf I am happy
    with under 4.7
7.  Ran through kernel conf again to confirm no new gotchas and all required
    deviations for my setup were followed.  Nothing looks fishy.

Then:
1.  Tried "second" procedure as documented
2.  Failure at some point I don't recall due to physical memory or swap size

How/why is this kernel ending up 0-sized with no error message?

I played with the kernel protection as documented in the troubleshooting
sections.  Everything seems normal.  Must I set kern_security level < 0
before
I begin?

Or should I lean on the "second" process to make it work?  The problem there
being that I do not have a kernel that allows me to increase swap by
creating a swap file   >:(

Any help would be appreciated.

Jeff