Upgrading a Red Hat Stock Kernel

By far the easiest way of upgrading your kernel is to do so using a stock kernel RPM as provided by Red Hat. These RPM files contain pre-compiled binary kernel code, with support for a large variety of hardware and popular features.

Installing a stock kernel is easy to do and involves little risk. Simply type, as root, the following sequence of commands:

rpm -Uvh kernel-2.0.36.i386.rpm
cd /boot
ls

Make note of the new kernel name, as reported by the ``ls'' command above. You are interested in the ``vmlinuz'' file; for example the third RPM release of kernel 2.0.36 would look like ``vmlinuz-2.0.36-3''.

Now, use an editor to edit the LILO configuation file (type: ``pico -w /etc/lilo.conf'') and change the ``image=/boot/...'' line to point to the new kernel file. After you have done so, type ``/sbin/lilo''. If LILO reports an error message, double-check the file name in your ``lilo.conf'' file with the file name in the ``/boot/'' directory.

Caution: Do not forget this step!

(The above commands assume you are using the Intel platform and use LILO to boot your system. See the section called Booting with LILO in Chapter 4 for details on the LILO boot loader).

After you have upgraded your stock kernel and have updated your boot loader information, you should be able to shutdown and reboot using the new kernel (see the section called System Shutdown and Restart in Chapter 6 for details on shutting down your system).