Re: Etch to Lenny, two kernel options now, why?
Ahhh, good thing to know. I think the problem was that with dist-upgrade
all those new packages came along, and I was subconsciously thinking
they were installed due to dependencies on the new kernel and thus
wouldn't work with the old kernel. But apparently there are some
packages (some of the new ones) that require the new kernel, as we have
seen in that nvidia discussion. But of course, some failing services
will not cause the system to fail.
Thanks
Andre
On Wed, 16 Jan 2008, ?????????? ?. ???????? wrote:
> Quoth Andre:
> > Hi there
> >
> > I recently moved to Lenny from Etch via dist-upgrade. Now I got two
> > kernel options in grub available for boot. Doesn't a dist-upgrade mean
> > that the old kernel is quite useless with the new system (with all its
> > new libraries and stuff)? If so, how do I get rid off Etch's leftovers?
>
> No, the Kernel doesn't depend on those libraries. Evenything you need to boot a
> machine is in /boot and /lib/modules/`uname -r`. From then on, any init-process
> may get called, which will most likely depend on _a lot_ of libs, but that's
> fine. (Actually, you wouldn't even need /lib/modules - if it wasn't for Debian's
> default initrd-policy. Let's not start a flame-war over that, I don't like it,
> but for a distro's stock-kernel it's maybe the best solution. But it's why
> you'll need the kernel's modules, too, when you boot.)
>
> Just one side note: never ever upgrade to a new kernel without having an old
> kernel around in case something goes wrong. I've hit _stable revisions_ that,
> with the *same* .config, wouldn't boot my machine. And minor revisions are even
> more dangerous - a friend's laptop wouldn't boot with anything between .21 and
> .23 - but is fine with .20 and 24-rc4.
>
> Having mulitple entries in grub isn't really much of a distraction. And the
> kernel images don't eat a lot of memory, too. Mine is currently 1.8 MiB,
> /lib/modules is 12 Mib, but that's only because nvidia's such a fat-ass hog.
> Otherwise it would be a bout 3 MiB.
>
> So, just ignore them and you might be very happy to have an older kernel lying
> around in case a new one explodes on you.
>
> Aleks
>
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