Just wondering... if I have installed two or three kernels for various reasons, how do I remove one of them?
Do I just delete the contents of /lib/modules/2.6.15....? Am I at risk of doing damage? Right now I have the original kernel from installing FC5 which is 2.6.15-1.2054 and I downloaded another kernel with patches in it so I could install and run ndiswrapper so I can use my wireless card. I only boot into the kernel with the patches so can I delete the original kernel and just keep the one that I am using, and if I can delete it, is it as easy as removing its directory from /lib/modules?

Thanks for any input.

If rpm installed kernel then using the complete name of the package use rhe rpm command.
Example: rpm -e kernel-2.6.15-1.2054

If kernel-devel matching kernel is installed you may have to delete them first.

Brian1

Since you are uding Fedora, remove the RPM that's associated with the older kernel.

I wasn't clear in my original post.

I downloaded a kernel with patches in the form of a xxx.xxx.xx..src.rpm then
rpmbuild -bb /usr/src/redhat/kernel-2.6.15.spec and then compiled, built, blah blah
the kernel. It wasn't a flat out rpm that installed itself. I had to build from source.

The kernel I want to remove is the default kernel that was installed with FC5 which
I believe is 2.6.15-1.2054.

I tried to remove it with: rpm -e kernel-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5 and got some dependency errors.

I just want to remove the original kernel. So would deleting the directory 2.6.15-1.2054_FC5 from /lib/modules do any harm?

You should be able to remove the rpms by do the same steps but backwards from the way you did the install. Last step first.

Got me a bit confused but to remove manual this and that goto the following areas.
/lib/modules and remove the module directories attached to the kernel you wish gone.
/boot and remove the system.map, vmlinuz, and init attached to kernel you wish gone.
edit /boot/grub/grub.conf and remove the kernels you do not need installed.
/usr/src/redhat/ BUILD, RPMS, SRPMS, SPECS, SOURCES and travel through them and remove what is needed.

Now doing the above is all manual removal. This does not remove the info from the rpm database. So the rpm tools will still always beleive it to be there if they were installed as RPMs.

Now if you check the manpages on the rpm command ' man rpm '. You will see option like --force and --nodeps. If you used the --force with -e to remove the rpm it will remove it no matter if the data base so it can or not. Only issue it may cause dependiency issues with other packages. This can be a big pain to to get fixed. One of the issues with RPMs. Use at your own risk. Before trying I would learn all that can be learned about the RPM system. There more info than I can write about it in this single post.

Brian1

Thank you!