Should kernels be upgraded or installed.

[David Woodhouse]

I thought that conventional wisdom was that kernel packages should
always be _installed_ rather than upgraded, so that the old, working
kernel remains on the system in case of problems with the new one.
Especially as we make our kernels gratuitously fragile by omitting ext3
support and _always_ requiring an initrd.

Hence I was a little bit surprised when I upgraded my powerbook to
rawhide and the installer removed all the old kernels, leaving only the
latest kernel with a broken initrd that didn't boot. 

I filed a bug (#129640) and it was closed 'NOTABUG'. Apparently the
installer has always done this and always will. I still think it's a bug
though.

If the general consensus is that the installer is correct, then we
should be consistent about it -- we should change up2date and yum to
upgrade rather than install kernel packages too.

If the general consensus is that having an old, known-good kernel to
boot from in case of problems is a _good_ thing, then perhaps I should
re-open the bug.

Discuss.

-- 
dwmw2