Before upgrading the kernel, take a few precautionary steps. The
first step is to make sure working boot media exists for the system
in case a problem occurs. If the boot loader is not configured
properly to boot the new kernel, the system cannot be booted into
Red Hat Enterprise Linux without working boot media.
For example, to create a boot diskette, login as root, and type
the following command at a shell prompt:
/sbin/mkbootdisk `uname -r`
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Tip |
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Refer to the mkbootdisk man page for
more options. Creating bootable media via CD-Rs, CD-RWs, and USB
flash drives are also supported given the system BIOS also supports
it.
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Reboot the machine with the boot media and verify that it works
before continuing.
Hopefully, the media is not needed, but store it in a safe place
just in case.
To determine which kernel packages are installed, execute the
following command at a shell prompt:
The output contains some or all of the following packages,
depending on the system's architecture (the version numbers and
packages may differ):
kernel-2.6.9-5.EL
kernel-devel-2.6.9-5.EL
kernel-utils-2.6.9-5.EL
kernel-doc-2.6.9-5.EL
kernel-smp-2.6.9-5.EL
kernel-smp-devel-2.6.9-5.EL
kernel-hugemem-devel-2.6.9-5.EL
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From the output, determine which packages need to be download
for the kernel upgrade. For a single processor system, the only
required package is the kernel package.
Refer to Section 37.1
Overview of Kernel Packages for descriptions of the
different packages.
In the file name, each kernel package contains the architecture
for which the package was built. The format is kernel-<variant>-<version>.<arch>.rpm, where <variant> is smp, utils, or so forth.
The <arch> is one of the
following:
-
x86_64 for the AMD64 architecture
-
ia64 for the Intel® Itanium™ architecture
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ppc64 for the IBM® eServer™ pSeries™ architecture
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ppc64 for the IBM® eServer™ iSeries™ architecture
-
s390 for the IBM® S/390® architecture
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s390x for the IBM® eServer™ zSeries® architecture
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x86 variant: The x86 kernels are optimized for different x86
versions. The options are as follows:
-
i686 for Intel® Pentium® II, Intel® Pentium® III, Intel® Pentium® 4, AMD
Athlon®, and AMD
Duron® systems
