Manually Upgrading the RedHat Kernel
Manually Upgrading the RedHat Kernel
Reference:
・ How do I upgrade the kernel to a particular version manually?
・ How to update/upgrade the Red Hat Enterprise Linux kernel?
Overview of kernel packages
Red Hat Enterprise Linux contains the following kernel packages:
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kernel — Contains the kernel for single-core, multi-core, and multi-processor systems.
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kernel-debug — Contains a kernel with numerous debugging options enabled for kernel diagnosis, at the expense of reduced performance.
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kernel-devel — Contains the kernel headers and makefiles sufficient to build modules against the kernel package.
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kernel-debug-devel — Contains the development version of the kernel with numerous debugging options enabled for kernel diagnosis, at the expense of reduced performance.
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kernel-doc — Documentation files from the kernel source. Various portions of the Linux kernel and the device drivers shipped with it are documented in these files. Installation of this package provides a reference to the options that can be passed to Linux kernel modules at load time.
By default, these files are placed in the/usr/share/doc/kernel-doc-kernel_version/directory. -
kernel-headers — Includes the C header files that specify the interface between the Linux kernel and user-space libraries and programs. The header files define structures and constants that are needed for building most standard programs.
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linux-firmware — Contains all of the firmware files that are required by various devices to operate.
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perf — This package contains the perf tool, which enables performance monitoring of the Linux kernel.
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kernel-abi-whitelists — Contains information pertaining to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux kernel ABI, including a lists of kernel symbols that are needed by external Linux kernel modules and a yum plug-in to aid enforcement.
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kernel-tools — Contains tools for manipulating the Linux kernel and supporting documentation.
Preparing to upgrade
To determine which kernel packages are installed:
~]# yum list installed "kernel-*" |
Downloading the upgraded kernel:
Performing the upgrade
At a shell prompt, change to the directory that contains the kernel RPM packages. Use -i argument with the rpm command to keep the old kernel. Do not use the -U option, since it overwrites the currently installed kernel, which creates boot loader problems. For example:
rpm -ivh kernel-<version>.rpm |
Never use "rpm -Uvh" here. To leave an old version just in case.
Update other packages:
rpm -Uvh kernel-devel-<version>.rpm |
Verifying the initial RAM file system image
As root, list the contents in the /boot directory and find the kernel (vmlinuz-kernel_version) and initramfs-kernel_version with the latest (most recent) version number:
~]# ls -1 /boot |