Linux Kernel Upgrade
One of the things I'd like to get into this journal is the basics of upgrading the Linux kernel so that it's written down in a good place to find it. Here goes...
- Get the RPMs for the kernel. Find out which ones you need by doing an
rpm -qa | grep kernel and then removing the entries for
kernelcfg and the like. For me this includes -src, -doc,
-headers, -pcmcia, -source, -utils and for one machine -smp. Just make sure you match what your system has. - If you want make a back-up floppy you can do that as root with:
# /sbin/mkbootdisk --device /dev/fd0 2.2.14-12
where the version (2.2.14-12) is obtained from /etc/lilo.conf and is pretty self-evident. The important issue is that this is the current version of the kernel.
- Upgrade all the kernel RPMs as root with:
# rpm -Uvh kernel*.rpm
there may very well be errors due to non-empty directories. This is not a problem as those directories that could not be removed can easily be removed manually.
- For SCSI-based machines, create new RAM Disk images as root with:
# /sbin/mkinitrd /boot/initrd-2.2.16-3.img 2.2.16-3 # /sbin/mkinitrd /boot/initrd-2.2.16-3smp.img 2.2.16-3smp
and remove any old .img files for previous versions of the kernel.
- Now edit /etc/lilo.conf and change the references to the old kernel version to the new version. This will most likely be in the image= and initrd= lines. To make these changes effective in the system you need to run lilo as root:
# /sbin/lilo -v
- Reboot.
These are pretty terse, but they'll get you through an upgrade.