I want to upgrade my kernel as a preparation to do a dist-upgrade from Etch to Lenny.

This proves to be difficult. In Etch 2.6.24 is available, but when I install linux-image-2.6-k7, apt installs linux-image-2.6.18-6-k7, which is way too old.

Changing the repositories to testing does give me a valid linux-image-2.6.22-3-K7 to install, BUT when I want to install the kernel headers, apt fails on linux-kbuild-2.6.22 not being available. I need the headers to compile the nvidia driver.

There is no other K7 kernel available in Testing. When I try to install linux-image-2.6-k7, apt wants to install an i386 version kernel.

All in all, this is strange. I am running other Testing (Lenny) systems happily running kernel 2.6.24 which was available at the time of installation.

I can't really find out why Lenny isn't offering a decent K7 kernel, or why linux-kbuild-2.6.22 is not available while the kernel is still in the repositories.

Any ideas?

jlinkels

I think Debian did away with the K7 kernels, you can just install the 2.6.26-686 kernel or whatever the latest kernel is.

I'll try that. Just wondering if it has a performance impact. The alternative is to compile my own kernel I presume? Or is the complete K7 option gone from the kernel? I could check that myself, isn't it?

jlinkels

I heard in another forum that Debian stopped maintaining the K7 kernels and going with 686 kernels. I went through what you going through and that's when I heard about it. I just went ahead and installed the 686 kernel. I don't see any difference.

OK, cool that there seems to be no speed penalty.

I am in the process of upgrading now. Yesterday I installed kernel 2.6.26+16 using linux-image-2.6-K7 which installed fine. Not booted into that kernel yet though.

Then I installed linux-headers-2.6-K7, but that required uninstall of a few hundred packages, including KDE etc. I wonder why apt insisted on removing all those packages instead of upgrading them. I think dist-upgrade would have upgraded all those packages, but then again, dist-upgrade did not propose to install a new kernel. On other machines I did a dist upgrade from Lenny to Lenny, and there a new kernel was installed. (and caused driver problems)

Weird anyway that a new kernel does not require removing packages, and installing the headers does. I would not be surprised if it had something to do with a dependency on libc6 or so.

Tonight I'll continue with the installation of KDE and will see what happens next.

jlinkels

K7 is the socket 462 processors (socket A), right? I just used stock i386 kernels on those when I had them, and had no problems. Of course, rolling your own would be the quickest, but not always practical.

Thanks for the answer.

However, I have problems getting 2.6.26 running on my box. It hasn't anyhting to do with processor type, but it can't mount my root file system. No matter what I did with labels, UUID and whatever. 2.6.22 boots fine, but 2.6.26 does NOT.

I filed this bug report about it.

jlinkels