Update kernel booting linux from floppy

[Vernon Brown_4]

I keep getting a message from up2date that I should reboot and test a newly installed kernel. According to the up2date message I am running with 2115.nptl and need to test the 2118.nptl vmlinuz. How to boot to the 2118.nptl? How to create a boot disk with the 2118.nptl kernel ??

These boot images are in my /boot directory.

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1252277 Oct 29 2003 vmlinuz-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1253413 Apr 21 19:53 vmlinuz-2.4.22-1.2188.nptl

Thanks for any help !!

Vern

[Tom Ward_1 · Accepted solution]

Vern,

You should be able to select the new kernel from the boot loader, ie grub or lilo. I've noticed that kernel updates do not select the new kernel by default.

To make a new boot floppy use mkbootdisk
"mkbootdisk 2.4.22-1.2188.nptl" may work for you, but run "man mkbootdisk" and check the options before you try running it.

Good luck,
Tom

[Steven E. Protter]

I don't think you need to do a floppy.

When you ran up2date it installed all the new files for a new kernel and it updated grub.conf

All you should need to do is boot the box and the machine will automatically boot off the new kernel.

If something went wrong and it won't boot, then there is an interactive display just prior to kernel load that lets you pick which kernel to boot. You use the arrow keys and hit enter to boot of the previous kernel.

To make the chang permanent, you edit the grub.conf file, which is either in /etc/grub.conf or /boot/grub/grub.conf

After install, there should be aline marked default=1

That will be the new kernel.

Change default=0 and the machine on power fail will boot off the old kernel.

SEP

[Vernon Brown_4]

Tom; it worked first try just as you wrote it !!
I did look at the man pages :o)

Steven; thanks; my problem with the auto-update of grub is that grub still wants to boot SuSE.

I'm on my development system; grub boots Widnows, SuSE, or selects floppy, which boots Fedora. Fedora mounts the SuSE partition under /SuSE

When I finish with SuSE; soon; I'll look at getting grub to boot Fedora straight away.

Thanks !!