On Tuesday, 15.03.2005 at 06:27 -0800, rds wrote: > Have a system running kernel 2.4.27 and would like to upgrade it to > 2.6. I am somewhat confused though whether I need to compile and build > 2.6 kernel or I could use the kernel-image package, e.g. > kernel-image-2.6.8-10-2-386. > > My understanding is that compiling kernel is necessary to include > modules specific to the support hardware on which the kernel will be > installed. In this case, what is the point of providing kernel-image? > How does one know what modules the kernel-image includes and whether > it will work on the specific hardware one has? When one installs > Debian on a new box from Debian CD, does the installation process > compile the kernel or just use a pre-compiled kernel image? Just try the 2.6 kernel package - the kernel-image packages include modules for pretty much everything, so unless your hardware is rather esoteric, you shouldn't hit any problems. A Debian installation will use a pre-compiled image, with everything included as modules - the appropriate modules for your hardware are loaded into memory at boot time. Basically, unless you want to tweak the kernel for optimal performance (a bit of a black art and probably not hugely useful most of the time), or you have very strange hardware, just try the standard kernel images. In any case, you'll still get the old kernels available at your boot menu, so if the 2.6 install doesn't work, you can revert to your old faithful 2.4.x kernel ... Dave. -- Dave Ewart - davee@sungate.co.uk - jabber: davee@jabber.org All email from me is now digitally signed, key from http://www.sungate.co.uk/ Fingerprint: AEC5 9360 0A35 7F66 66E9 82E4 9E10 6769 CD28 DA92
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