Happy
I decided to attempt to upgrade existing kernel 2.6.35.6 with kernel.org latest stable version of kernel 3.2.11 .
What I did is the following:
[1] Download latest kernel tarball from linux.org kernel-3.2.11.tar.bz2 .
[2] Untar it in /usr/src/kernels where I do have my latest 2.6.35.6 headers used.
[3] Recompiled there, created in /usr/src/kernel/3.2.11 System.map and copied it to /boot/System.map-3.2.11 file, and in arch/x86/boot/bzImage which I copied to /boot/ as vmlinux-3.2.11 .
[4] executed as root make module_install, and created /lib/modules/3.2.11 directory as such.
[5] Tried to use from /usr/src/kernel/3.2.11 as root:
[root@localhost 3.2.11]# mkinitrd -f /boot/initramfs-3.2.11.img 3.2.11
ERROR: modinfo: could not find module vmhgfs
ERROR: modinfo: could not find module vsock
ERROR: modinfo: could not find module vmware_balloon
ERROR: modinfo: could not find module vmci
[root@localhost 3.2.11]#
Still, the initramfs-3.2.11.img was created. Not sure should I play with make menuconfig. And not sure how this image was created, as my current kernel is 2.6.35.6-45?!
[6] Then in boot I relinked System.map -> /boot/System.map-2.3.11 and vmlinuz -> /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.11 (as referring to step [3]).
[7] go to /boot/grub/ and changed grub.conf such as added linux (3.2.11) section as shown:
# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
# root (hd0,0)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/sda2
# initrd /initrd-[generic-]version.img
#boot=/dev/sda
default=1
timeout=0
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Linux (3.2.11)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-3.2.11 ro root=/dev/sda2 quiet
initrd /initramfs-3.2.11.img
title Fedora (2.6.35.6)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.35.6 ro root=UUID=51ae460d-02df-4140-b620-a5cf80b3cc52 rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_LVM rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYTABLE=us rhgb quiet