I just signed up for this sight and it has help me a lot in my new installation of Debian and it works great. However there is one thing I have not been able to find.

I have just installed Debian 3.1 and had to chose to use the 2.6 kernel (the linux26 option) since there was no smp option. After the installation was completed and working fine, I installed the 2.6 smp kernel to be able to use the dual processors on my system. Everything works great but I will be installing Debian on a few other computers and wanted to know how to have Debian installer install kernel 2.6 smp in the first place without having to install or upgrade to the smp kernel afterwards.

Even the online manual from debian says to install the single processor kernel first then compile new kernel (even though the installation DVD has 2.4 smp and 2.6 smp on it). But if it is possible, I would like to be able to select 2.6 smp from the beginning of the installation.

If anyone knows how I can do this, it would be greatly appreciated.

you just need to install 2.6 smp kernel image and kernel headers there is no need to do any other things

just install these packages for SMP support

kernel-image-2.6.8-2-686-smp

kernel-headers-2.6.8-2-686-smp

For installtion first you need to run this

#apt-get install kernel-image-2.6.8-2-686-smp

and then run this

#apt-get install kernel-headers-2.6.8-2-686-smp

after finishing the installation you need to reboot your machine after reboot run the following command to check the details

#uname -a


hope this helps

Thanks for the reply but I was looking for an option in the Debian installer.

I received an email from Debian help and the solution is to enter expert26 at the boot prompt and you can choose which image you want to use (a few menus after the partition).

Before, I tried the expert26 but gave up and rebooted after the first few options. The selection of the kernel is towards the end of the installation process.