I'm installing FC in a VMWare environment.

Though I doubt it much matters VMWare wants to know the kernel version of the distro that is being installed prior to beginning installation.

Is FC3 using kernel 2.4 and FC4 using kernel 2.6?

Thank you.

Hi,

From a terminal give the following command:

uname -r

It will answer something like: 2.4.26. This is your present kernel release (sometimes called version)

Hope this helps.

Thank you for the reply.

Unfortunately I need to know the kernel release prior to installing it.

The Red Hat web site should tell you what kernel version is shipping with that product.

That did the trick! Thank you.

From the web site:

"Going down towards the system level, the 2.6.9 Linux kernel is included with SELinux enabled in active, targeted mode."

Whatever SELinux might be.......

Edit: Just figured it out. It appears to be the security componenets embedded within Linux itself.

SELinux is a method of hardening your operating system to make it more secure. I am planning on learning more about it asap. It seems like a good idea.

SELinux (Security Enhanced Linux) is produced by, of all things, the United States National Security Agency. http://www.nsa.gov/selinux.

Their home-page says it all.

If you stop and think about it, "regular Linux" has one important Achilles heel: too many things are "root or nothing." A web-server might have to run as root, in whole or in part, just to be able to open TCP/IP port #80. In doing so, however, the potential exists that any rogue who can manage to get the web-server program to run as root and to do something nasty .. has just done something nasty to your machine! All because your web-server needed to open port #80.

One of the solutions to this problem, as implemented in these so-called "hardened Linuxes," is to introduce the concept of a capability. Now you can run your web-server as an ordinary joe, with no special powers at all except that it has been granted an "OPEN_PORT_80" (say) capability.

Another weak-link in "regular" Linux is the somewhat primitive "user/group/anyone" "read/write/execute" permission-structure, a legacy of the earliest days of Unix on a PDP-8. Access Control Lists (ACLs) enable you to assign more-specific file access rules.

These are a couple of examples of what is referred to as "hardening."

Also, "hardening" involves increasing awareness on the part of the system administrator (that means you...) as to what kinds of threats exist and how these various tools can be intelligently used to counter them. Pragmatically speaking, a lot of nasty things happen to people by pure chance: scripts are out there, trolling for IP-addresses of machines that "aren't paying attention" and exploiting them "just because they left the front door unlocked."