Re: Kernel Upgrade?

[Steve Turnbull <steve.turnbull@yhgfl.net>]

On Sunday 30 January 2005 18:56, Max wrote:
> Thanks very much for the info.  I'll have a mooch around the directories
> and commands you have provided and see where I get.
>
> My /lib/modules contains the lone entry 2.2.20-compact and /boot contains
> vmlinuz-2.2.20-compact.  the disc from which I installed has the words
> debian GNU/Linux 3.0r2 printed on it.
>
> The word lilo appears when booting, but I've never played with lilo.
> Looks as if I'm about to start now...
>
> Anyway, thanks all and I'll see where this goes.
>
> Regards,
> --
> Max
>
> Holy Mary, pray for us now and in the hour of our deaths :-)%%

This would suggest that you are running Debain stable (Woody). This is fine, 
but if you want to do a lot of what I suggested, you may have to install a 
couple of other packages as well;

apt-get install libncurses5-dev
This is required when doing the make menuconfig, and by default I don't think 
it is installed.

If you want to use an up to date (2.6) kernel with Debian patches, you can get 
the kernel sources with apt, but you will need 'testing' repositories in your 
apt config. It is as simple as this (but be carefull if it tries to install 
or remove packages);

edit /etc/apt/sources.list

if you have an entry similar to this...
deb ftp://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ stable main non-free contrib

...then change the 'stable' with 'testing to look something like this;
deb ftp://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ testing main non-free contrib

Then do a 'apt-get update' and 'apt-get install <kernel-sources-version>'

Once the kernel sources have finished installing, reverse what you have just 
done in your sources.list file.While were on, you might decide you want to 
try a more up to date version of Debian? You can just do 'apt-get 
dist-upgrade' (will need broadband, it will attemt to download about 500MB of 
software).

Steve