Kernel Upgrade in Debian

[Bindumadhava.V]

Hello,

Could anyone help in upgrading Kernel in Debian 3.0 from 2.2.x to 2.4.x..? And what are the steps to be taken..?

Regards
Bindumadhava.

[Umapathy S]

hi,
I dont have experience in Debian. But the release notes of Debian 3.0 says 2.4.* is available.



Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 for the Intel x86 architecture ships with kernel version 2.2.22.

The 2.2 kernel series has been updated and developed extensively introducing several valuable changes both in the kernel and in other programs based on kernel features, along with a whole slew of new hardware drivers and bug fixes for existing drivers.

A 2.4 kernel is also included in this release for optional installation by users. Although the 2.4 branch is considered by the kernel developers to be a stable kernel branch, the Debian GNU/Linux release team judged it not to have reached sufficient maturity for inclusion as the default kernel in this release.



But I normally get the source from kernel.org and compile it for my machine.

HTH
Umapathy

[Regis Boudin]

Hi,

You have several posibilities to switch to a 2.4.xx kernel.

1/ Use Debian stock kernel. The package is kernel-image-2.4.18-XXXX. version bf2.4 is, in my opinion, the most convenient to use (but it is i386 optimized).

2/ Compile your own one. You can refere to this page :
http://www.debian.org/doc/FAQ/ch-kernel.en.html
I recommend using kernel-package.

Regards
Regis

[Michael Creutz]

Be sure to have a boot disk ready since problems will happen. This is the most important step!

Install a recent kernel-source package. Also get the kernel-package package.

The kernel source package puts a bzip2'ed file in usr/src. bunzip2 it and go to the created directory. Run something like make menuconfig or make xconfig (I prefer the former) to generate an appropriate .config file.

Do "make-kpkg kernel_image" in that directory. This makes a kernel image deb file in /usr/src. Go to /usr/src and do "dpkg -i" on the deb file.
Read any messages carefully. Reboot.

Things will go wrong on the first few tries, so reboot and repeat the above, mostly tweeking the configuration step. The boot disk is a great savior here.

You could instead install one of the stock kernel-image files, but they will have extra baggage and are set up more complicated than necessary. Also the above process will teach you a lot about your machine.

Mike