Is it best practice to upgrade from default CentOS7 Kernel version 3.10 to latest 4.16 ?
 

Hello,


We are using a web server for our websites and the below some info of our server:
==================================
OS: CentOS Linux release 7.4.1708 (Core)
Server version: Apache/2.4.29 (cPanel)
Kernel: Linux 3.10.0-693.21.1.el7.x86_64
==================================

Everything is working fine. We have no issues with our server till now.

However, we know that latest stable Kernel version is 4.16 at https://www.kernel.org/ . Is it best practice to upgrade from default CentOS7 Kernel version (3.10) to latest 4.16 or should we keep it as it as ? What's your suggestion ?

Any suggestion would be appreciated.

Regards,
Tarak Nath

...meaning that you NOW have issues, or you do NOT have issues? Which is it?
Not even a question to consider, in my opinion. CentOS is stable because EVERYTHING is tested to work with everything else. Upgrading the kernel from source is plain dumb, and unless you really, truly NEED some bleeding-edge feature that only the new kernel can provide, there is **ZERO REASON** to perform such a task.

Again, what is your goal? What do you need to accomplish by doing this?

Hello TB0ne,

Thank you for your quick response !

I am extremely sorry for my bad English.

Actually we don't have any issues with our server. Everything working fine.

I am asking this from the security point of view.


Regards,
Tarak Nath

Security patches are backported into kernel version 3.x in CentOS.

Hello jsbjsb001,

Thank you very much for your suggestion. Really appreciate it.

Regards,
Tarak Nath

At some future point in time, you probably should update those systems – not just for the newer version of the kernel, but the newer version of "everything else, too." Distro are integrated collections of software that have all been tested against each other. Keep it as a distro and eventually update it (all ...) "as a distro."

Thank you very much for your valuable suggestion. Really appreciate it.

Regards,
Tarak Nath

Centos kernel has quite many backports (features from newer kernel moved to older one) so there should be not much missing. If you want to migrate, you may check what elrepo has from newer kernels, for instance the LTS 4.14 can be a good choice. You may do a test update on one server if you miss a feature you need. This way you can find out if everything you need is working just fine.

Is it best practice to upgrade from default CentOS7 Kernel version 3.10 to latest 4.16 ?
 

Thank you very much Mara for your suggestion. Everything is clear now. Thanks again