Per my previous post of Logitech Quickcam Pro 4000 and the Saillard pwc driver, I need a running kernel and a set of kernel sources that EXACTLY match each other. I am running 10.1 CE, with the 2.6.8.1-10 kernel, but only have sources for 2.6.8.1-12. The Saillard driver doesn't like the mismatch, and has to be forced to load - won't do so automatically.

I went hunting in the urpmi sources and found kernel 2.6.8.1-24mdk and the matching source. I would like to upgrade to this new kernel to get the exact match between source and running kernel that I am looking for.

Is the kernel upgrade as easy as (1) doing an "rpm -i kernel-2.6.8.1-24mdk....." and then (2) adding the new kernel (hopefully installed in /boot by the rpm -i) to my grub boot menu? Or, are there some gotchas I need to be aware of? I have a pretty well configured system at this point - I don't want to blow it out of the water!

Thanks!

There shouldn't be any major problems.
If you use any binary-only drivers (like NVIDIA's) it may not work but as for the base system you should be OK.

And as long as you do an 'rpm -i kernel-whatever.rpm' you still have your old kernel available to revert to
if anything doesn't work.

Oh, and do upgrade to OE
(as per my previous reply)

- Peder

Well, I did the upgrade and it worked out just fine. The only gotchas: (1) had to re-install the nvidia drivers - it reverted back to the stock "nv" driver. (2) had to rebuild my webcam pwc driver - same issue. Other than that, all is well.

Re upgrading, I don't think I can anymore. I have installed KDE3.3.2 on top of 10.1 CE, building it from source. Now, if I upgrade, I would end up downgrading KDE, wouldn't I? I would rather not do that! I do have a 10.1 OE DVD now - ordered it some time back - and so I could conceptually upgrade by removing all my other urpmi media sources and adding this one, and then doing the upgrade. However, I am pretty sure I would lose my KDE3.3.2. Is there a way to avoid this?

I guess loosing KDE depends on where you installed it. If it's under something other than /usr (like /opt or /usr/local) you're OK.
If not, you'd have to rebuild it.

And I'd upgrade by booting from the DVD and selecting "Upgrade". I've read here that apparently it's feasible to "urpmi-upgrade"
a system but I feel more sure of the official way.

- Peder

If you look under your urpmi directory you should find a file called skip.list or skip.lst (can't remember as I'm at work). In there you can specify which packages that urpmi should not update.

For example, my skip.list file contains the following lines:
grub
lilo
kernel
kernel-source

If you do an urpmi.update then any package that begins with the above will not be updated. Also, if you go through the MCC and try to manual install a package that begins with any of the above, the MCC will refuse.

It should be possible for you to put kde into your skip.list file and update without affecting kde but I'd google a bit to make sure or search the forums for similar.

As for the kernel, again the MCC or urpmi should have been able to point you to the kernel-source of your original kernel version as long as your sources were pointed to the right version (10.1 CE).

I updated 10.1 CE to 10.1 OE using urpmi without any problems, but then I didn't have any self compiled packages prior to the update. I would think that this is the preferred method because the DVD or CDs will have the original packages that may have been updated because of bug fixes so you'd end up doing an update after the upgrade through urpmi or MCC anyways.

Regards,
Crispus

Just a quick "thanks" for all the insights. I think I will try to DVD upgrade route and see how it goes! Thanks again.