I recently upgrade to Etch, but I am wondering that whether they have upgrade the kernel for me, so I check my kernel version: Linux debian 2.4.27-2-386 #1 Wed Aug 17 09:33:35 UTC 2005 i686 GNU/Linux.
Anyone please tell me what is the latest stable version of kernel and please tell me how to upgrade.
Thank You.

See for yourself at http://www.kernel.org

And for upgrading to a 2.6 version, you have to

aptitude install linux-image-2.6...

You have to take the one for your architecture:
http://packages.debian.org/cgi-bin/s...ng&release=all

Probably 686, so:

For a debian kernel to work smoothly it will install dependencies:
http://packages.debian.org/testing/a...e-2.6.18-4-686

Thank you for helping, now i have the latest kernel now.

The latest stock debian kernel is 2.6.18-4 but you can compile your own custom kernel for the "real" newest stable version, which I believe is 2.6.20.7 (I just downloaded it yesterday and compiled it). http://www.kernel.org will show you the latest kernels.

Don't be scared of compiling your own kernel either. Its actually very simple to do on Debian.

1) Install the following packages via apt (apt-get install fakeroot kernel-package module-assistant build-essential wget bzip2 libncurses5-dev)

2) Download the kernel in bz2 format to /usr/src (cd /usr/src; wget http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kern...h-2.6.20.7.bz2) and extract it (tar -xjf linux-2.6.20.7.bz2)

3) create a symlink to the new kernel folder called "linux" (ln -s linux-2.6.20.7 linux)

4) change to the newly created symlink directory (cd linux)

5) choose your modules to install (make menuconfig) - if you don't know, just leave it all as defaults (or load up your working config from your /boot directory). When finished choose "Exit" and "yes" to save your changes.

6) Now compile your kernel into a .deb package for easy installation (fakeroot make-kpkg --initrd --revision=custom1.0 kernel_image)

7) If the compile didn't error out (warnings are normal) then install the .deb package you just created (dpkg -i ../linux-image-2.6.20.7_custom1.0_i386.deb)

8) Reboot your computer into the new kernel.

Thanks, I have installed the kernel-2,6. However, after I reboot, I found that there are two kernel installed in my computer, kernel 2.4 and kernel 3.6, so should I uninstall the Kernel 2.4? Thank you.

The size of the kernel+ modules is quite small. You should always have another kernel configured in case the current one fails.
So I would say, keep it!

The size is:
Probably not much..


edit: you got a kernel 3.6? Wow quite bleeding edge!

Yeh, I've actually got five kernels in my grub list now. Probably time for a spring-clean.

I have a few kernels in my list too.

2.6.8 (debian stock [from sarge])
2.6.17.8 (custom)
2.6.18 (debian stock [from etch])
2.6.18.8 (custom)
2.6.19.7 (custom)
2.6.20.4 (custom)
2.6.20.7 (custom - just installed the other day)

And debian doubles up on my list, for the single user modes.

If, like me you are annoyed by this, edit /boot/grub/menu.lst to this (don't forget the # in front!)

## should update-grub create alternative automagic boot options
## e.g. alternative=true
## alternative=false
# alternative=false

And then update-grub.

Hop! no more single user thingy. I now only have 11 kernel lines

Very cool! It does bother me, but not to the point of looking up how to disable it. I'll have to remember to set this on my machines tonight when I get home. Thanks!

I've got the same doubling up and I've never actually used the single user mode. I know it's intended for system maintenance but when would you/should you use it instead of the usual multi-user kernel?

$ ls -1 /etc/rc1.d/S*
/etc/rc1.d/S21aumix
/etc/rc1.d/S30killprocs
/etc/rc1.d/S90single

You can see that single user mode starts very few services.
When you have trouble booting you can start in this runlevel by putting a "1" at the end of grub line.

If it still doesn't work, it can be a problem with /sbin/init. In this case, you can add init=/bin/sh at the end of the line. You will get a very minimal shell and a single console

The next step is to append specific kernel parameters to disable some parts of the kernel.

To summarize, it's a Failsafe boot

Single user mode boots up directly into a shell - only tty1 exists - only 1 user can login to the machine at this point, but not via ssh or any other remote methods. No services have been started at this pont (gdm/kdm/xdm, ssh, apache, printer crap, etc etc. On Debian you will be presented with a prompt for your password (or press ctrl+D to cancel and continue booting up as normal.

In this shell you will be able to perform sytem maintenance otherwise impossible to perfrom (like fsck or fixing gdm settings if it freezes when it loads up, etc, or even network settings). The posibilities are endless. Once you have fixed what you want just type "exit" to exit the shell and the machine will continue to boot up like normal without a restart (i.e, it starts up all the services, apache, printer crap, system monitors, even gdm/kdm/xdm).

Single user mode has saved my ass idk how many times. But I dont need an entry for it in grub. If you ever need to boot into single user mode just hit the "e" button while the kernel you want to boot into is highlighted. You will be presented with a "temporary override settings" screen. Choose the kernel line (most often the second line) and append "-s" or "single" to the end and press enter to save, then "b" to boot with the changed settings. This will only take effect this time only. Next reboot grub will be back to normal.

Another boot option that not many Debian users are aware of is "init=/bin/sh" appended to this line. This will have the system boot up and stop once init is loaded. Basically you have the most minimal shell ever. Your hard drives arent even mounted and nothing is loaded at all. this method does not need a password to gain root access to the box.

I'll try follow these instructions to compile my kernel