On Tue, 2006-06-13 at 17:40 +1000, Matthew Palmer wrote: > On Tue, Jun 13, 2006 at 03:17:28PM +1000, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > BTW, what approach do these upgradable distros take to installing new > > kernels? I.e. keeping the right modules available and matched to the > > kernel that's booting, and allowing older kernels to stay in the boot > > config? > > On Ubuntu, at least, the default install will install a dummy package called > (for example) linux-686, which depends on the current version of the kernel > suitable for use by a 686-class machine (currently something like > linux-2.6.15-37-686). Each new release of Ubuntu will install a newer > version of linux-686, which will, in turn, install a new "real" kernel > package. > > I don't think there's any automatic cleanup of old kernel packages in an > Ubuntu system, but it's not a major hassle as the new ones get booted by > default, and if you need the old one because (for example) the new one locks > up, you'll really love having a bunch of old kernels to flip through.
This is how debian works as well. The meta package always depends on the most recent kernel version, and there's no coflicts statements or, as far as I'm aware, no standard way of cleaning up older versions. So kernels tend to accumulate, especially on machines that track the development branch of your chosen distro. As Matt says, the newest version is the one which boots by default. grub gives you a menu containing every installed kernel, and lilo has two entries; Linux, which boots the newest kernel, and LinuxOLD, which boots the second most recently installed kernel package. > > Does Ubuntu allow the use of Lilo instead of Grub? > > Yes, but it's not the default option (and so you won't see it in the normal > install process). You can certainly install it afterwards though if you > want to, and I'm fairly certain that new kernels will get automatically > detected and lilo rerun. Yeah, lilo's still fully supported in debian and friends. The kernel package updates symlinks and reruns lilo during postinst. As long as you don't mess too much with the image specific options in lilo.conf, everything Just Works. -- Pete -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
