30.4. Performing the Upgrade

After retrieving all the necessary packages, it is time to upgrade the existing kernel. At a shell prompt as root, change to the directory that contains the kernel RPM packages and follow these steps.

	Important
	It is strongly recommended that the old kernel is kept in case there are problems with the new kernel.

Use the -i argument with the rpm command to keep the old kernel. If the -U option is used to upgrade the kernel package, it will overwrite the currently installed kernel. The kernel version and x86 version might vary):

rpm -ivh kernel-2.4.20-2.47.1.i386.rpm 

If the system is a multi-processor system, install the kernel-smp packages as well (the kernel version and x86 version might vary):

rpm -ivh kernel-smp-2.4.20-2.47.1.i386.rpm 

If the system is i686-based and contains more than 4 gigabytes of RAM, install the kernel-bigmem package built for the i686 architecture as well (the kernel version might vary):

rpm -ivh kernel-bigmem-2.4.20-2.47.1.i686.rpm 

If the kernel-source, kernel-docs, or kernel-utils packages are to be upgraded, the older versions are probably not needed. Use the following commands to upgrade these packages (the versions might vary):

rpm -Uvh kernel-source-2.4.20-2.47.1.i386.rpm 
rpm -Uvh kernel-docs-2.4.20-2.47.1.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh kernel-utils-2.4.20-2.47.1.i386.rpm

If the system requires PCMCIA support (for example, a laptop), install the kernel-pcmcia-cs and keep the old version. If the -i switch is used, it usually returns a conflict because the older kernel needs this package to boot with PCMCIA support. To work around this, use the --force switch as follows (the version might vary):

rpm -ivh --force kernel-pcmcia-cs-3.1.24-2.i386.rpm 

The next step is to verify that the initial RAM disk image has been created. Refer to Section 30.5 Verifying the Initial RAM Disk Image for details.