Upgrading the Kernel (sid, woody)
- Q. What steps are necessary to upgrade a Woody system from Linux 2.2.x kernel to a 2.4.x?
- A. 1. Run the command "apt-get install kernel-image-2.4.x[ -y ]", where x is the latest minor release number (currently 18) and -y is optionally defined optimized version (e.g. -686, for the latest Intel/AMD processors).
Q. I want to patch the Kernel (woody,2.4.20) for using AES-Loop-Devices. What do I have to do?*
- A.
In case of ["LILO"] boot manager: In case of ["GRUB"] boot manager:
Q. I just upgraded to the 2.4 kernel from a 2.2 or 2.0 series kernel, and I get an kernel panic error saying /root= missing, halfway into the boot. My old kernel still works without any problems though. What's going on?*
- A. The Debian 2.4 series kernels use an initial RAM disk (initrd) to load part of the kernel at boot time ...
This is an error that could show up if you've used dist-upgrade to migrate from a previous Debian release (i.e. Potato). Add the appropriate initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4 to your lilo.conf and rerun lilo.*
If your boot loader is ["GRUB"] the setting is in /boot/grub/menu.lst
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Q. Are there any programs - whatsoever - in Sid which doesn't run if one would like to use the ["devFS"]?*
A. Haven't found any thus far... Although grub-install will complain if you have devfsd running and you have old /dev/hd? entries in your /boot/grub/devices.map. The solution is to delete the devices.map and rerun grub-install
DebianSid offers a small daemon program(devfsd) that sets up all of the old /dev entries for compatibility with older programs.
Troubleshooting/Debugging
Q. I've tried 2.4.5 and 2.4.7 with the same config. The 2.4.5 system got halt after a little network traffic (say, by downloading several kilobytes or being accessed thru smb by other nodes) but the 2.4.7 stay stable. Is there a bug inside 2.4.5? Some of my friends complained about the similar symptom.*
A. I've run 2.4.5, 2.4.6 and 2.4.7 on production servers. I had high load problems with 2.4.6, but the other two have been rock-solid. I recommend just using 2.4.7 and upgrading as newer kernels come out. --["RObert"]
A. This information is very obsolete. Recent (2.4.18 is current) kernels are fine.