Debian Kernel

[Chris L.]

I have just did a network install from a debian (woody) floppy disk. But I noticed that it uses kernel version 2.2xx. Everyone talks about how easy it is to upgrade the kernel in debian (presumably with apt-get?), but could someone please tell me how to do this?

Thanks a lot,
Chris Lynch

[ph34r]

Why not just get the source yourself and compile a kernel for your machine/needs... it is easy to do, and you can avoid extra crap you don't need for your machine.

[Gaccm]

simple:

apt-get update; apt-get upgrade


thats it. But, you might want to change where you are downloading from, if so, you want to edit /etc/apt/sources.list

Also, if you want to upgrade your kernel, first you are going to need a newer version of binutils (which should be installed when you apt-get upgrade).

Also, by default, debian only uses "stable" packages, which have gone through extensive testing. If you are using a server, great, but for a desktop i'd suggest you use testing or unstable packages. But, i'd wait until you are more familiar with debian before changing it to testing or unstable.

[Chris L.]

I did that and when I booted to the new kernel, I got some message, ds: no sockets! Kernel Panic.

[Strike]

Upgrade the kernel as you normally would by using source. That's the way I do it. They have a package that allows you to make kernel debs but I don't really use it.

[slacker_x]

# apt-get install kernel-package kernel-source-2.4.14
# cd /usr/src
# tar -jxvf kernel-source-2.4.14.tar.bz2
# rm -r linux
# ln -s ./kernel-source-2.4.14 ./linux
# cd ./kernel-source-2.4.14
# make xconfig
<choose kernel options>
# make-kpkg clean
# make-kpkg kernel_image --revision=desktop.1.0
# dpkg -i ../kernel-image-2.4.14_desktop.1.0_i386.deb
<answer a few questions>
# reboot -n

You now have an updated, custom built, kernel.

[error27]

I'm not sure why you are getting the no sockets errors. At what point in the boot sequence do they show up? Write down the two lines in front of it and post them here.

If you don't want to compile the source type this.

apt-cache search kernel | grep image

Then type

apt-get install <kernel name>

for example i would type:

apt-get install kernel-image-2.4.14-k6

Then reboot.