Re: Debian/Ubuntu kernel update question

["Jarod Wilson" <user=74@nabble.blu.org>]

 On Tue, 2008-06-24 at 10:57 -0400, Matthew Gillen wrote: 
> > On Mon, 23 Jun 2008 19:06:51 -0400 
> > "David Hummel" <[hidden email]> wrote: 
> > 
> >> AFAIK there's no reliable 
> >> mechanism to inform the apt system that a given kernel is really no 
> >> longer needed.  I'm guessing this is one reason you don't see a tool 
> >> for this purpose, at least in Debian derivatives. 
> 
> Fedora's way of handling this is pretty sane I think: there's a yum plugin 

Close, but not quite. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, its 
actually part of the core yum functionality now. 
  
> that implements a policy that at most 2 kernels will be installed at any given 
> time. 

Also close, but not quite. The policy isn't actually specific to 
kernels. Its applied to any and all packages. Most packages with the 
same name can't be installed multiple times, due to file conflicts, but 
kernel, kernel-xen, kernel-smp, all can. Can't think of anything 
non-kernel it applies to off the top of my head... It sort of applies to 
kmod packages, but those are tied to a specific kernel version anyhow, 
so when you pull kernel=foo, kmod for kernel=foo should also go... 

> When updating, always leave the running kernel installed (since it's 
> obviously able to at least boot and provide some functionality), and if 
> necessary remove the other one. 
> 
> Kernels with special names (ie from the CCRMA repository or somesuch) don't 
> fall under this policy (since they need to be manually installed anyway).  The 
> "only 2" rule only applies to distro-supplied kernel packages. 

False. See above. It applies to any package where you have more than one 
of the same named package. It can apply equally to multiple installs of 
a package named "kernel" and to multiple installs of a package named 
"kernel-ccrma-superfoo". But it doesn't aggregate between kernel and 
kernel-ccrma-superfoo, they're handled separately. 

> Since distro-supplied kernel releases are typically bug-fixes, there's usually 
> not any good reason to have more than two of them installed. 

One word: rawhide. :) 

Oh, and you can now have both kernel-i686 and kernel-x86_64 of the same 
version-release installed simultaneously, if you're crazy like 
that... :) 


-- 
Jarod Wilson 
[hidden email] 


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