Can't patch kernels in Gentoo- what's the problem?

[wrc1944]

I've done hundreds of kernels in Mandrake, patches etc., no problem. I just installed Gentoo 4 days ago, and have compiled 2.4.21 for athlon xp, and 2.6.0-test1, both from source in /home/wrc/kernels directory, as user (then su for modules_install and cp bzImages). This works fine, and is my usual method, but strangely, I'm unable to apply any patches to 2.4.21! I don't get it- I've spent 2 days trying to figure this out. It's not like I don't know how to patch kernels, but in Gentoo, my tried and true procedure doesn't seem to work.

I always get (also as user):

root@localhost linux-2.4.21 # bzip2 -dc patch-1000_01_PE_LL_0306300059_2.4.21-ck3.bz2 | patch -p1
bzip2: Can't open input file patch-1000_01_PE_LL_0306300059_2.4.21-ck3.bz2: No such file or directory.
root@localhost linux-2.4.21 #

There are no typos- I've checked 10 times. This happens with any patch I try. I'm sure it's something possibly Gentoo specific and simple I'm missing, but so far, I'm clueless. Could somebody please enlighten me as to where I'm going wrong?

Thanks much,
wrc1944
_________________
Main box- AsRock x370 Gaming K4
Ryzen 7 3700x, 3.6GHz, 16GB GSkill Flare DDR4 3200mhz
Samsung SATA 1000GB, Radeon HD R7 350 2GB DDR5
OpenRC Gentoo ~amd64 plasma, glibc-2.36-r7, gcc-13.2.1_p20230304
kernel-6.8.4 USE=experimental python3_11

[Phlaegel]

Apologies if this is too obvious to ask, but are you sure the patch file is in the current directory when you run bzip? Are you using tab completion to ensure the exact filename?

[wrc1944]

Yes- positive- I've done it hundreds of times this way, so I'm really perplexed.


Update: I just did a 2.4.22-pre7 with athlon-xp flags. I patched the 2.4.21 sources from kernel.org as user in /home/wrc/kernels with my standard compiling method. I did the pre7 patch first, using the same exact method as had failed before with all the ck patches, and this time applying a patch worked as usual!
A real mystery.

I went on to build and install 2.4.22-pre7xp, and it wotks great- I'm on it right now.

Maybe if I extract a fresh copy of 2.4.21, download fresh copies of the ck patches, and try again, applying patches will now work. But, somehow I'm expecting problems again.

BTW, can anyone please explain why I can't get a shell to open, or open the kde superuser file manage as root when booting kernel 2.6.0-test1? Everything else works great- even all my long standing problems with 2.5.xx are gone. But if I can't get a shell, it's useless. Must be an xconfig mistake, but I can't seem to figure it out.

wrc1944
_________________
Main box- AsRock x370 Gaming K4
Ryzen 7 3700x, 3.6GHz, 16GB GSkill Flare DDR4 3200mhz
Samsung SATA 1000GB, Radeon HD R7 350 2GB DDR5
OpenRC Gentoo ~amd64 plasma, glibc-2.36-r7, gcc-13.2.1_p20230304
kernel-6.8.4 USE=experimental python3_11