kernel upgrade anxiety

[Øyvind Stegard]

Josh Coffman wrote:
<snip>
>    when I upgraded to 2.6.12-1.1390_FC4, I had a
> couple things to re-make and install: nvidia drivers,
> ndiswrapper...
> 
>    Although I took decent notes, I'm unsure about
> upgrading now that it's working. What are the
> pro's/con's of updating your kernel?
Kernel updates do not replace your current kernel (by default with yum). 
The update is installed as a new kernel package, and a new entry is 
inserted into the boot loader configuration file (/boot/grub/grub.conf). 
In other words, you can have multiple kernel RPMs installed at the same 
time. This way, if you don't get the new kernel working, you could 
always go back to the old one (selecting it from the grub boot menu), 
for which you've installed extra drivers like nvidia and 
ndiswrapper-stuff. I'd recommend staying updated with kernel releases, 
it's well worth it. You can list all of your installed kernels (in case 
  you've never erased the old ones) with the command:
$ rpm -qa|grep kernel

Øyvind.
-- 
< Øyvind Stegard < oyvinst at ifi uio no >
  < http://www.oyvind.nu/
   < `Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math.'