Kernel upgrade question / opinion / suggestion

[duckie]

Hey everybody. So I was reading up on all the latest comments / problems/ etc. on the new 2.4.11 kernel on Slashdot, and was considering upgrading myself. But, I'm not too sure which version of the kernel to go with.

I'm probably going to upgrade my workstation (currently running RH 7.1, with it's 2.4.2? kernel, I think) to 2.4.11, but I'm still not too sure if I should go that far, or if I should start out with something earlier before all of the VM problems started up (I was thinking 2.4.5 or so). But, I can play around with my workstation, and if I fsck it up it's not a big deal, since there's nothing major on there.

However, I'm more concerned with my server (running RH 6.2, kernel 2.2.15-something). It had been hacked into about 2 weeks ago, because I forgot to upgrade my packages after reinstalling (I had to reinstall after my HDD crapped out on me). So I'm still a lil worried about security issues, even though everything's been clear since then. Before it died, I had been running RH 6.2 with a 2.4.3 kernel, but I hadn't gotten the chance to take full advantage of all its features since I was still pretty new to it all (I mainly wanted to learn and play with iptables (and kinda still do), but I couldn't get a decent firewall working, with the exception of quick masquerading for my internal network).

So, my question would be does anyone out there have a suggestion on what to upgrade to? Should I stick with the 2.2 tree and go for 2.2.19, or should I go for something newer? I don't think I can go too "new", because some of the requirements for 2.4.11 include packages I can't upgrade, since I don't have glibc2.2 installed, and last time I tried doing that, I just couldn't..the damn thing wouldn't let me. If anyone has any recommendations, problems, or good things they've noticed about any version, I'd really appreciate the input. Thanks guys!

[Apostata]

In regards to your server, it would be the best advice (of this humble person) to simply upgrade the distro and reap the benefits of upgraded everything at once, versus upgrading the packages individually and risking incompatibilities.
Of course, it's your server, so it's not as if you can just turn it off and screw around till your heart's content. Still, I'd either keep it the way it is or upgrade to a newer version of the distro (that supplies kernel 2.4x).

My $0.02

[duckie]

Thanks for the advice. However, I forgot to mention this part. My server's been picky as hell lately, since the HDD crashed. For some reason, I couldn't install anything on the "new" HDD I was using (I had taken it out of another system..it had Win98 on it). I formatted it, and tried installing RH 6.2, 7.1, and Debian 2.2.3, and I forget specific errors, but it refused to let me install ANY of them.

So, I took the HDD to my workstation and installed RH 6.2 from there (and I think some of the swap errors and other minor problems that I think I'm having are due to that..). I dunno why, but the install ran without a problem, and after putting the HDD back in the server, it ran fine.

I tried upgrading to RH 7.1 though, and this time I can actually get into the install, but after I choose "Upgrade existing installation", it says it's going to include /dev/hda6 (which is my / partition) and format it (or something to that effect), and then it comes back and says that my drives were unmounted correctly at the last shutdown (which they weren't!), and to please reboot and try again. I got this 3 times in a row, and just gave up. I don't know what the problem there is though. Argh..it's always something isn't it.

[subnet_rx]

look for 7.2 any day now.

[Apostata]

Hmmm...have you ran fsck on the drive to check for errors?

[duckie]

7.2 eh? I didn't know it was coming out. Anyone know of any neat features included, which kernel's gonna be in it, etc etc?

About the fsck..actually, now that I think about it, I might not have done that right before..it crashed a couple of times before I tried the install (like I said, I think they're swap errors..I get a kernel panic, but am sometimes able to work through it), and I'm pretty sure it made me fsck the disk myself. But I might not have done that right before the install, though there were no problems with the disk on boot-up the 3 times I tried to install. I'll give that a shot when I get home later tonite. Thanks for the reminder!

And, in case anyone's wondering, don't go for the 2.4.11 kernel..there's a symlink bug..so, 2.4.12 is out (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/11/1154223&mode=thread) (although one of the posts said that there's a parport bug..argh!).

[bdg1983]

Originally posted by duckie:
<STRONG>
And, in case anyone's wondering, don't go for the 2.4.11 kernel..there's a symlink bug..so, 2.4.12 is out (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/11/1154223&mode=thread) (although one of the posts said that there's a parport bug..argh!).</STRONG>

I was just going to compile the 2.4.11 kernel at work this morning when I noticed the 2.4.12 kernel on freshmeat and then read about the symlink problems. Damn as the latest released cuecat drivers are for the 2.4.11 kernel and I figured I could finally get it to work.