Re: Installing SMP kernel

[Shyamal Prasad <shyamalprasad@verizon.net>]

    "Arnór" == Arnór Kristjánsson <addi@bhs.is> writes:

    Arnór> Hi, I just installed Debian on the xserve I've been
    Arnór> battling with for the last few days, foregoing raid support
    Arnór> and such. I used "install-power4" which installs the
    Arnór> package kernel-image-2.6.8-power4. I want to enable smp in
    Arnór> the kernel so I installed kernel-image-2.6.8-power4-smp,
    Arnór> ran yabootconfig which didn't ask me what kernel I wanted
    Arnór> to use (and I'm assuming it is not its job to do that)
    Arnór> which nets me this in /etc/yaboot.conf:

What you did seems correct.

What debian does (on all bootloaders I've used: grub, lilo and yaboot)
is to keep sets of links as the default kernels. The first is
/boot/vmlinux (and /boot/initrd.img) that points to the default
kernel, and then /boot/vmlinux.old (and /boot/initrd.img.old) that
points to the kernel that was the default before the current default
was installed. The boot config files use this convention by default.

When you apt-get a kernel your current kernel will then be pointed to
by /boot/vmlinux.old and the new one by /boot/vmlinux (and so too for
the corresponding initrd images). This way the kernel you just
installed is the default when you reboot.

Basically, if you'd just rebooted you *should* have had the kernel you
just installed (the smp one :-). 

The nice thing about this system is it is kind of natural (you get the
kernel you just installed) and it does not require updating files


Cheers!
Shyamal