upgrading kernel sarge
 

the current kernel for sarge is 2.6.8. How do we upgrade to a newer revision (eg 2.6.10 or 2.6.11) while sticking to sarge?

Or do we have to upgrade the kernel to etch? when trying to do this, apt-get warns that it will also pull in other things. One of them us busybox... why would busybox be used on a PC ??

busybox is used in the initrd image.

Upgrading your kernel is separate from everything else in apt. "dpkg -l | grep image" to see what's already installed on your system.

Then to see what 2.6 kernels are available.

Hmm... looks like they're using the name "kernel-image" for so-called transitional kernel packages, and "linux-image" for the current regular packages. I don't know the purpose of those...

Anyhow, I'd try just picking one of the "linux-image" packages, apt-get install it, then reboot. Then, if all is well, apt-get remove --purge the old one.

On my Etch system (on a Pentium 4, which was upgraded from a Sarge system), I've got the following installed:

The new correct name MUST now be linux-image to not interfere with HURD. Kernel-image should be abandonned. The problem is when it was introduced, the created package was still called kernel-image-xxx.deb :)

Ah. Thanks nx5000. I just did and it went away (wasn't taking up any space anyway though, of course). Rebooted and all is fine.

So, ptawe, to recap: since you're on Sarge, when you do your apt-cache search you'll only see "kernel-image" packages. You can just apt-get install the most current one of those that matches your hardware, reboot, and then apt-get remove --purge the old kernel (though you don't have to do that last step if you like keeping multiple kernels around).

kernel-image-2.6-686 is just a dummy package that depends on the most recent 2.6 kernel compiled for 686. Removing it will prevent automatic kernel upgrades via apt.

Ahh let me clear what I said:
The new kernel images (will) have a different naming convention. I didn't mean that if you have such a package, you have to remove it!!


Do you still have linux-image-2.6-686?

Maybe dracae is right, you won't get warned by automatic update of your kernel.. :confused:

Sorry for my poor english..

> Do you still have linux-image-2.6-686?

Yes. I kept "linux-image-2.6-686", and removed kernel-image-2.6-686 from my system.

I tried to reinstall kernel-image-2.6-686, but there was an apt problem. I did an "apt-get update", and then tried again: "apt-get install kernel-image-2.6-686" and it worked. So, I'm back where I was.

Fun stuff. :)

I think this has side tracked a bit from what ptawe was asking (although it's interesting none the less). :)

What he was getting at is in the Sarge repositories, the latest 2.6 kernel is 2.6.8. He wants a newer kernel than that, but since Sarge is stable except for security updates, there won't ever be a "Sarge" kernel newer than 2.6.8.

So ptawe, you can stay in Sarge, but you'll have roll your own kernel by downloading the source from kernel.org and building it from there. It won't be optimized for your debian system, but it should work just fine. Google for "compile kernel debian way"...

linux-image-2.6-686 and kernel-image-2.6-686 are essentially the same. You don't need both but they should not conflict.
linux-image-2.6-686 depends on linux-image-2.6.15-1-686 which provides the latest 2.6.15 kernel.
So in short linux-image-2.6-686 will keep you up to date between kernel subversions e.g. 2.6.x, where linux-image-2.6.15-1-686 will keep you up to date among the 2.6.15 version but will not upgrade to 2.6.16+

ptawe,

Here's a link to compiling kernels in Sarge newer than 2.6.8: http://www.howtoforge.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21

I like this one too: http://newbiedoc.sourceforge.net/system/kernel-pkg.html

Thanks for these infos, they are pretty useful. I was just trying to avoid compiling 2.6.8 while staying as close as possible to stable. At the moment, i had some hardware issues so i will just hope that the kernel in etch will deal with it better.

thanks!

Compiling isn't all that scary. It takes a bit of time to go thru the configuration, but even on my old Celeron 400MHz, it only takes 58 minutes to compile... If you know what hardware you need to include, it really can go rather quickly...

The easiest way to get a new kernel would be to check backports, aside from that you can add the etch repository to your sources.list and add to /etc/apt/apt.conf. You can then apt-get a newer kernel or apt-get source and build from that with kernel-package so that it installs with your libs versions, minimizing upgrades.