Before you upgrade your kernel, you need to take a few precautionary
steps. The first step is to make sure you have a working boot diskette
for your system in case a problem occurs. If the boot loader is not configured
properly to boot the new kernel, you will not be able to boot your
system unless you have a boot diskette.
To create a boot diskette for your system, you need to determine which
version of the kernel you are currently running. Execute the following command:
You must be root to create a boot diskette for your system. Login as
root at a shell prompt, and type the following command (where
kernelversion is the output of the
uname -r command):
/sbin/mkbootdisk kernelversion |
 | Tip |
|---|
| | Refer to the man page for mkbootdisk for more options.
|
Reboot your machine with the boot disk and verify that it works before
continuing.
Hopefully, you will not have to use the diskette, but you should store
it in a safe place just in case.
You should also determine which kernel packages you have installed. Some
are optional and not required to use the kernel. For example, the
kernel-doc package contains all the documentation
for the kernel and is not required to boot the kernel. The
kernel-source package is also not required because
you do not have to compile the kernel from source.
To determine which kernel packages you have installed, execute the
following command at a shell prompt:
The output will contain some or all of the following packages, depending
on what type of installation you performed (your version numbers may
differ):
kernel-headers-2.4.7-3
kernel-2.4.7-3
kernel-source-2.4.7-3
kernel-doc-2.4.7-3
kernel-pcmcia-cs-3.1.24-2 |
From the output, you can determine which packages you need to download
for the kernel upgrade. The only required package is the
kernel-version-number
package. If you are uprgrading the kernel on a laptop or are using
PCMCIA, the kernel-pcmcia-cs package is also
required.
You do not need the kernel-headers and
kernel-source packages unless you plan to recompile
the kernel yourself or plan to perform kernel development. The
kernel-doc package contains kernel development
documentation and is not required.
