Patching the kernel
 

I have a question about kernel patches that will upgrade the kernel one release, say from 2.4.22 to 2.4.23. It seems that while recompiling the whole kernel will create a 2.4.23 folder and name everything 2.4.23, using a patch to upgrade will keep the 2.4.22 folder but upgrade the files in it. Can I rename this folder from 2.4.22 to 2.4.23 now without causing problems? Is there anything else besides /lib/modules/2.4.22 that don't change with a patch but do change with a recompile? In other words, is there anything else I'll need to rename/change? I'm afraid if I change the name of this folder I'll still have things out there looking for a 2.4.22 kernel when it doesn't exist anymore. What tells programs that you are using a 2.4.23 kernel... is it just the name of this folder?

Thanks,
Johnathan

In /lib/modules/<version-mumble>/
there's a symlink to the kernel-directory
it was compiled from ...

If you rename the directory for the newly
patched kernel the build will point into the
void.


Cheers,
Tink

So what then is the proper way to let the system know you are running 2.4.23 instead of 2.4.22? In otherwords, how does "uname -r" and other programs know what the kernel is. Right now uname -r shows 2.4.22 even though I've patched it to 2.4.23.