Before you say no...my question is probably fairly easy to answer...as well as laughable to an experienced user.

First question...

How does one go about finding out what kernel version they have before installing the distro?

Second question...

Once one has determined what kernel version they have in the install package, how does one upgrade to the newest kernel version before installing a distro...or is that even possible?

...and now for the 64 peso question...

I am "trying" to install RedHat 9 on my system, however Red Hat does not recongize my SATA Drives, nor my PATA Drives.

I think the reason it's not recongizing my PATA Harddrive is because I do not have it IDE controlled. It is RAID controlled and I do not have the RedHat Driver for my RAID controller.

My RAID Controller is Promise Fast Trak 378, by the way.

I think if I could find a RedHat 9 driver for the Promise RAID controller, I could get it to work.

Now...why I asked how to find out about the kernel...

I would like to find out what kernel I have so Promise can determine what driver I need.

I have also heard that certain kernel versions DO NOT support RAID/SATA controllers and that updating to a newer kernel may support those RAID/SATA controllers...but what do I know? Remember? I'm a

Any bright minds out there have any suggestions?

Patiently waiting...

-Henny

At the command prompt, type: uname -a
This will return the kernel version.

Thanks! Is it possible to upgrade my kernel before I install my distro?

check for a distro that has the latest 2.6.8 kernel

www.distrowatch.com is a good place to find a suitable disto....

I heard that Yoper is a really good distro...

Redhat offers no support for Redhat 9 now ..
so Fedora Core is the next logical thing if u wanna stick to redhat ...

Please check out all the distro's and their HardWare compatibility list's before taking any decision..

Unforunately I have not installed RedHat yet, so I don't have a command prompt. ...that is unless I am doing something wrong.

I did, however, try your suggestion at the "boot:" prompt and I received this in return: "Could not find kernel image: uname"

Thanks,

Henny

Not sure how fimiliar you are with both RedHat 9 and Fedora, but is the real difference between Fedora and RedHat 9? Are they essentially the same at the core or completely different?

Thanks for the suggestion.

-Henny

Redhat 9 by default comes with 2.4 kernel...

believe me its a pain to upgrade ur kernel to 2.6

if ur willing to then go ahead install redhat 9 kernel 2.4 and then upgrade it to kernel 2.6 later...

Redhat and Fedora are very similiar.. except minor differences...

Fedora is sponsored by Redhat people... and it comes with kernel 2.6 ... ie. FC2

Do you think it would really even make a difference with my situation if I was to update my kernel to 2.6? Just curious...

yes there will be significant amount of updates .. drivers.. and kernel 2.6 is faster than
kernel 2.4..


Check the Hardware compatibility list for fedora and other's to see if they support ur hardware ...

If ur unable to get info on drivers for ur hardware .. post in different forums.. wait for the answer and then go go ahead with the install..