[PLUG] Two Red Hat 7.2 Kernels on One Computer???

Russ Johnson russj at dimstar.net
Mon Mar 25 17:49:37 UTC 2002


This is by design, and desirable.

Whenever you update your kernel, you should leave your existing (and 
hopefully, fully functional) kernel installed and working. This allows you 
to boot to your old kernel, should something be messed up with the new 
kernel. I've run into new kernels that didn't work, for one reason or another.

As a side note, if you choose to download and manually install the kernel 
rpm, make sure you do a -i (install) rather than a -U (upgrade) with rpm. 
The former will leave your existing kernel, the later removes the existing 
kernel. If the old kernel is gone, you have no safety net.

I've also seen the scripts in kernel rpms leave the existing kernel as the 
default. What this means is that you need to go into /etc/grub.conf or 
/etc/lilo.conf (depending on your boot loader) and manually make the new 
kernel the default. I find this to be a good safety mechanism as well.

At 10:28 PM 3/24/2002 -0800, you wrote:
>The Red Hat 7.2 update downloaded the newer kernel and now when the
>computer boots, Grub has both the old and new listed.
>
>Is just left over on the menu or do I have two separate kernels on board?

Russ Johnson
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