Kernel Upgrade from Sarge 2.4
 

Ok, I have just netinst sarge with the 2.4 kernel and I want to uprgrade to 2.6. If I use the apt command in the guide stickied at the top, will I have to go through to rest of the altering and such to various system files? I learn best by jumping in, but I'm a newb and not sure I'm up to it (though I will do it if I must lol). Also, changing bootloader files and such...should I do all that after I upgrade? If so, how will I get to linux from grub if the right think isn't listed? I know this is enwbish, but thanks all.

It's all automatic.. Just apt-get install kernel-image-<version> and it does the rest.

Call me a sceptic on this one.
 

After having had fingers burnt repeatedly on kernel upgrades on other distros, I find this very hard to believe. Especially in light of the stickied thread at the top of the forum...

The stickied thread was written by me because I patched the kernel to include a Debian boot logo and Netraverse Win4Lin support. If you don't care about such things and do not want to customize your kernel, apt works fine (as stated above).

For the latest kernels, if you do: apt-get install kernel-image-<version>, it will automatically install the kernel and modules, and automatically put an entry for the new kernel in Grub. Just reboot into your new kernel. It is painless and fast. Also, if there are bugfixes to the kernel that you are using, it will automatically be upgraded when you do: apt-get upgrade

It has been said many times and many ways, but Apt is great!

Hmmm...
 

The big problem I have is with ACPI and the SATA hard drive (the CD-ROM and DVD burner are the only IDE devices in the PC). These two problems have caused every foul-up I've had while attempting kernel upgrades in the past (network not found, USB problems and simply not starting up, reporting loss of interrupt). Therefore I'm very sceptical about upgrading the kernel being that simple, at least on my PC.

If you are running Debian, it takes maybe 5 minutes to try it. You have nothing to lose. Your old working 2.4.x kernel will still be there. If your skepticism proves to be true and you have a problem, just reboot into your old kernel. You can try fixing any problems with the new kernel then, or you can remove the new kernel if you don't like it using apt or dpkg.

Just try the following from a terminal: That will give you a list of available 2.6 kernels. Pick one you like (386-generic, 686-pentium, k7-athlon, or smp-multiple processors). I have an Athlon XP, so I do: That will automatically install your kernel and put an entry for it in Grub (your old kernel entry will still be there). You can check grub manually with: to convince yourself. If you find that ACPI is giving you problems, you can try adding the "noapic" parameter to the grub entry for your new kernel. I'm not sure what to say about SATA, since I've never used it.

Problems...
 

Selecting a relevant kernel image (AMD Athlon XP here) also needs "module-init-tools" to be updated as well. And herein lies the rub (at least with attempts to update this tool on other distros)!

Updating that tool caused problems with the bootup process, resulting in the network card not being found (and giving error messages about IRQs conflicting, as well as momentary freezing). And enabling/disabling ACPI made no difference.

And note there's 2.6.8 available to me, not .9 - I'm using Sarge, not Sid (though I may consider dist-upgrading to Sid if/when that becomes the testing branch).

This is a VT8237 chipset, if that's of any help to you.

Did you install Sarge? and is module-init-tools currently installed? Try: and see if it prints out the version installed. Currently Sarge (testing) and Sid (unstable) have the same version of module-init-tools (3.1-pre6-1), so it shouldn't need upgrading if you installed Sarge. Maybe if you selected the 2.4 kernel during installation, module-init-tools wasn't installed at all. If that is the case, then you will have to install the module-init-tools package along with the kernel. It <should> work :D though. I checked the bug page (http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgre...ule-init-tools) and couldn't find any bugs like you described. I'm not sure what advice to give. I usually just keep trying things until I find a way to make it work or completely screw things up so badly that it is easier to re-install the operating system.:p

Uh oh...
 

I take it this isn't a great state of affairs... not entirely sure why it was never installed in the first place (did a netinstall). This could explain some strange start-up messages as well...

I'll note I couldn't find anything obviously pertinent in the bug tracker regarding the kernel either. Whether or not this is a good thing is unknown, though...

modutils is used for the 2.4 kernels and module-init-tools is used for the 2.6 kernels. Since you selected a 2.4 kernel, it probably wasn't needed so it was not installed. If you do "apt-get install kernel-image-<version>", it should automatically install module-init-tools since it is a requirement for the 2.6 kernel.

I don't know why module-init-tools would screw up the 2.4 kernel though. If you make your system un-bootable, you can always re-do the netinst (assuming you haven't spent a lot of time configuring things yet).

Kernel stuffs...
 

Seems modutils is for version 2.4.26, whereas there's kernel 2.4.27 installed. Hmmm... strange?

As for why it would, I'm not sure. Now, on SUSE, kernel upgrading also required mk_initrd to be run. Which didn't work very well for me. And here, I've noticed some errors messages involved when loading the sound card modules (not related I think, but who knows...).

I'm strongly leaning towards the idea that installing a new kernel probably isn't worth it with regards to the previous problems I've had. It works as it stands right now, and I don't want to change that, and the particular hardware combo I have just doesn't seem to be supported properly with most distro-supplied default kernels (which makes me think some modules - probably SATA/ACPI related - aren't being built or have otherwise been altered enough to break on this PC). I'm not yet confident enough to roll my own one, either (although I'm seriously tempted to install a distro onto my spare PC and learn about compiling the kernel on that one).

Just to let you know...
 

Tried installing kernel-2.6.8 just now, and it did exactly what I suspected it would do - barfed at hard drive detection, giving timeouts.

The upgrade didn't go smoothly for me as well and I just have IDE disks...for those using only apt-get they are either plain lucky or too bright and forget to mention what they did in preperation before apt-getting 2.6.

Since you have s-ata you might as well try compiling yourself using the kernel-source-2.6.x. This leaves more control compiling support into the kernel.

Rule of thumb with regards to anything Debian related, it seems: never believe someone when they say it's "simple", it almost never is!

As for compiling the kernel, once I get the test machine set up I'll practice doing so on that one. Not confident about trying that just yet.

Actually, I'm a newb and when I went from 2.4 to 2.6.8 I just used synaptic to get it and everything went well unless something is horribly wrong and I'm just missing it... which is certainly possible lol.