Upgrading my CentOS kernel

[Jarod Wilson]

On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 9:11 AM, Franklin H. Chasen <chasen-KVEKqrk+LIpWk0Htik3J/w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> You should be able to upgrade to the latest Centos 5.4 kernel by just
> running "yum update". If you need an even more recent kernel you might
> check in the Centos Plus repository.

The CentOS Plus kernels are the exact same kernel base as the CentOS
kernel (aka, the RHEL5 kernel), just with some things enabled that Red
Hat doesn't enable in its build. :)

If you really want a newer newer EL5 kernel, go here:

http://people.redhat.com/jwilson/el5/

Those are interim builds leading up to the next RHEL5 release kernel
(so that's a 5.5 in-development kernel).

Particularly if you're running a kvm VM, you probably really do want
these bits (at a bare minimum, you want 5.4, which adds all the kvm
paravirt drivers, making kvm guests perform much better, but 5.5 will
add additional kvm features, enhancements, improvements, etc).

> Otherwise you will probably need to build a kernel from source.

...which can be slightly painful, as much newer kernels are often
somewhat dependent on newer userspace bits (like udev, hal, etc) than
EL5 ships, but it certainly *can* be done...


> On Fri, 2010-02-05 at 08:46 -0500, Tim Callaghan wrote:
>> I'm running CentOS 5.3 on a VM and I need to upgrade the kernel to
>> something newer for testing purposes.
>>
>> Having never done this before can anyone point me in the right
>> direction (a good step by step tutorial would be awesome)?  The CentOS
>> wiki only seems to have instructions on how to customize the CentOS
>> kernels, not to run a more recent kernel.
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> -Tim


-- 
Jarod Wilson
jarod-ajLrJawYSntWk0Htik3J/w at public.gmane.org