DELL SC1425 running Debian - Are stock 2.6 kernels known to work?

[Simon Waters]

I have a DELL SC1425 running Sarge.

I have tested the upgrade path to Etch (Better late than never), but on 
slightly different hardware.

The kernel is currently the stock Debian kernel: 2.4.27-2-686-smp [which has 
worked flawlessly for over 3 years].

My install notes (2005-05-04) say stock Debian kernel 2.6.8-2-686-smp didn't 
work with this hardware, but I didn't write any details about how it broke (I 
vaguely recall it not detecting the hard disks?!).

The server runs Squid (amongst other things). 

Squid in Etch (also version 2.6 just to confuse) requires "epoll".

"epoll" requires a 2.6 kernel. 

(I had to completely rework the squid config as well to make it work - sigh).

I'd be grateful if anyone could confirm at what point (if any) stock 2.6 
kernels started working, or at least that the current 2.6 kernel in Etch 
works!

[Otherwise I might end up running everything of the test server!]

The original Debian Install report for this box is here:

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=307680

Seems the Internet has a better record of some of these details that I do.
It has output of lspci if relevant. Box also has software mirroring.