Hello,

I have a question about kernel updates.
I have some new hardware that I want to install on my server.
It's a MSI Mainboard and a AMD Athlon 600 CPU.
A friend told me that it would be wise to to a kernel update after a clean install of Debian.

Can someone tell me what kernel I have to use or where I can find the correct kernel for my CPU and Mainboard?

Well, the only kernel is at www.kernel.org There are variations of it, different releases and such, it's probably best to use the latest STABLE version, which is currently 2.4.21 the download is about 28MB.

Cool

with debian, use dselect and update your package list. Then, search through dselect until you find a newer kernel, and install it. (Use 'uname -a' at the command line to find your current kernel version.) You should be root to do this, of course.

On the other hand, if you're new to Linux, or new to debian, and your system seems to run okay, updating your kernel right away may not be something you HAVE to do right away. Get used to the system, get comfortable with using dselect, apt-get, or another package manager (I like aptitude, but it's all a preference thing) first, then tackle the kernel update.

That's one of the nice things about debian, you don't have to hunt for programs, apt does it for you. For more information on apt, type 'man apt-get', or 'man dselect' at the command line. (dselect and aptitude are menu driven versions of apt)

Thnks 4 your quick reply's

Basically there is one kernel like MasterC said. Your friend probably means to recompile the kernel specific for your cpu. You can compile it special for a athlon. Should make it slightly quicker also. There are also various patches available to add features to the kernel.

That is indead what my friend was reffering to.
But where can I find the kernel or update that is build for the Athlon?

A direct link, more direct than the one I provided above :
http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v...2.4.21.tar.bz2

Cool

Thank you verry much!
Is this the kernel specially for Athlon?
Or is this the newest stable version of a standard kernel?

As you are on a Debian machine, you should be doing things the one true Debian way!


# apt-get install kernel-source-2.4.21
# cd /usr/src
# tar xjvf kernel-source-2.4.21.tar.bz2
# cd kernel-source-2.4.21
# make menuconfig
# make clean
# make dep
# make-kpkg clean
# make-kpkg --revision=${HOST}.1.0 build
# make -f debian/rules kernel-image-deb
# make-kpkg modules_image
# cd /usr/src
# dpkg -i kernel-image-2.4.21_*.deb

For more information,

zless /usr/share/doc/kernel-package/README.gz

When you do make menuconfig you have to choose athlon. Say 20 people all have different computers, but they all want to run the latest vanilla kernel (stock). They all would get the same file as MasterC showed. Now, when they all do make menuconfig everyone would choose different options. You will see as soon as you go into the kernel options.