Re: kernel update

[Stephen Powell <zlinuxman@wowway.com>]

On Mon, 15 Feb 2010 00:42:51 -0500 (EST), Stan Hoeppner wrote:
> Stephen Powell put forth on 2/14/2010 8:50 PM:
>> On Sun, 14 Feb 2010 20:53:11 -0500 (EST), Jim Pazarena wrote:
>>>
>>> is there a CLI command (or commands) which can update
>>> the kernel, similar to apt-get ?
>> 
>> I'm not sure what you're asking.  The kernel is just another package, as far
>> as the package management system is concerned.  It is updated the same way
>> all packages are:
>> 
>>    aptitude update
>>    aptitude full-ugrade
>> 
>> This of course assumes that you have internet and security sources defined
>> in /etc/apt/sources.list.  (And, for the stable release, the volatile
>> source as well.)
> 
> It also assumes, I believe, that you're running a stock kernel.  If you're
> running a custom kernel compiled from source, I don't believe aptitude upgrades
> will replace your kernel.  They've never replaced my kernels anyway, including
> distribution upgrades.

The

   aptitude update
   aptitude full-upgrade

sequence does not replace a binary kernel directly, no.  But it will download
the new kernel source package.  For example, on a Lenny system, if you earlier
did an

   aptitude install linux-source-2.6.26

and then compiled a custom kernel from that source, then later a security
update was made to the kernel, the above sequence of two aptitude commands
will cause a new .deb package for linux-source-2.6.26 to be downloaded to
/var/cache/apt/archives and the package will be "installed" in the sense that
a new tarball will be unpacked from the package file by the name of
/usr/src/linux-source-2.6.26.tar.bz2.

It is up to you to take over from there.  You have to notice that a new kernel
source package was downloaded and do something about it.

Of course, if you obtained your kernel source code in the first place from a
non-Debian source, then the package management system knows nothing about it.
You are totally on your own in this case.