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Re: Kernel Upgrade?



Max wrote:

Dear All,

Is it possible to change the Linux kernel in a Debian installation without having to do a complete reinstall?

It seems that most responses to this thread have been of the "here's how you compile a kernel" type.

No No No No No.

Compiling a kernel is a great thing to do; lots of education involved. But if you just need a newer kernel and aren't ready for that education, just apt-get install a newer binary kernel. For most purposes, a pre-built binary kernel will suffice. I mean, you're using one now and doing pretty well with it, right?

The Stable packages page at Debian.org seems to be inaccessible to me at the moment, so I can't double-check, but I'm pretty certain that Stable has a 2.4 kernel available.

Just run "apt-cache search kernel-image" to see what kernel images are available.

Once you find the one you want, say "kernel-image-2.4.18-1-686", you can install it with the command "apt-get install kernel-image-2.4.18-1-686". Assuming nothing goes wrong (run out of partition space, etc), the kernel should install, configure lilo, and be all set for a reboot. Once you reboot, you should be running your new kernel.

Now I may be wrong that it'll all go easy on a Stable system (I run Sid on most of my boxes), but I'm pretty confident this will work.

--
Kent



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