Re: [gentoo-user] Kernel upgrade question: is it adviseable?

[Dale]

Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On Wednesday 03 June 2009 17:43:56 James Homuth wrote:
>
>> Related, however, if I do recompile it and
>> decide to do so with genkernel,
>>
>
> Yuck. I tell people to stay away from that thing.
>
> Just learn how to do it yourself. It's not hard, you get only what you want,
> and there are thousands of howtos all over the net
>

I agree with this big time.  Both parts.

>
>> will it respect the settings I've compiled
>> into 2.6.28 or will they need to be reset again before 2.6.29 is compiled?
>>
>
> No. Not unless you give it the old config to use. IIRC it has some feature to
> use the config for the currently running kernel (/proc/config.gz) if the
> running kernel supports it. But I could be may off course here too.
>

Why not copy the config from the old kernel over and run make
oldconfig?  May need to do some cleaning after genkernel tho.

>
>> thanks for any information on the subject.
>>
>
> You'll get MUCH better answers by reading the kernel compile guide in the docs
> section of gentoo.org. Your post implies that you have not read it, as all
> your questions are answered in it. Knowledgeable folks here will give you the
> same answers, so just read the doc instead...
>
>

I would agree with Alan here.  Learn to compile your own kernel.  It is
not nearly as bad as you may think.  If you use grub, just save the old
kernel you are using now.  If the boot fails, reboot, edit the grub boot
line and use the old kernel.  Heck, I keep at least 2 working kernels
here and during testing, I may have a dozen or more.  Grub is wonderful
when testing kernels. 

Curious to know a what to know which kernel is which, check this out:

root@smoker / # ls /boot/bzImage-2.6.2*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2460088 Jan  2 20:13 /boot/bzImage-2.6.23-r8-7
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2463768 Apr 16 17:10 /boot/bzImage-2.6.23-r8-8
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2347324 May 16 12:09 /boot/bzImage-2.6.25-r9-1
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2347356 May 18 07:59 /boot/bzImage-2.6.25-r9-2
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2352956 May 23 09:51 /boot/bzImage-2.6.25-r9-3
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2370876 May 27 11:01 /boot/bzImage-2.6.25-r9-4
root@smoker / #

I know what version the sources are and what local version I compiled,
the number on the very end where each compile goes up one number.  I
been using Linux for years, notice it took me 4 tries to get my current
kernel working.  The last fix was USB, sort of missed the drivers for
that.  lol  I still keep my old trusty 2.6.23.  It took me 8 tries to
get that one perfected.  I say all that so you know you may not get it
perfect the very first time.

Hope that helps.

Dale

:-)  :-)