Red Hat 7.1 multiple kernels (fwd)

[ddm at pizzashack.org (Derek Martin)]

On Sat, Jul 07, 2001 at 10:05:38PM -0400, Gerald Feldman wrote:
> "Carl A. Hein" <chein at tiac.net> wrote:
[SNIP]
> Not only that, if you try to install one of the kernels in the
> kernel series, you end up being unable to boot the system
> even with the use of a floppy rescue disk.

This happens because you can't simply install a new kernel and have it
work.  The required process is documented on Red Hat's site (though I
can't find the link, but probably searching on something like "upgrade
kernel" should find it), and I *think* it's also in the printed manual
(though I don't have one handy to check).  If that's true then it
should also be in the on-disk documentation, for those who don't have
a printed manual.  Those manuals are (or at least were as of RH 6.x)
contained in RPMs on the install disk, and I don't recall the names of
the packages, but they're some of the few packages that begin with
`rh' in the name.  Yeah, that was really helpful, I'm sure...  =8^)

Anyway, the gist of it is, you must install a new kernel RPM with
this:

  rpm --force -ivh kernel-<whatever>.rpm

And after that, you must edit /etc/lilo.conf to create an appropriate
entry for your new kernel, and re-run lilo.  Then, if you've done all
this properly, you should have no problems.

Note that you may want to remove old kernel RPMs before you install
new ones.  I have recently removed the kernel I was running from the
filesystem without any ill effect, so this *SHOULD* not cause a
problem, but I would be certain to get a bootable kernel image on the
system ASAP after removing the current kernel.

The reason you may want to do this is that after running the above RPM
command, you will have multiple kernel RPMs installed, and removing
them with the rpm command will become either difficult or impossible.
I know that you can't simply say `rpm -e kernel' because the rpm
command will complain about having multiple packages installed.  You
might be able to tell it which package to remove, e.g.:

  rpm -e kernel-2.2.14-5

...or some such thing, but in my experience specifying the version
part of the RPM name makes the rpm command fail miserably.  

Hope that helps.  Ordinarily I'd try to provide more accurate info,
but it's just too late... ;)


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Derek Martin          |   Unix/Linux geek
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