This white paper explains how to upgrade an existing desktop system to the 2.6 kernel. It covers software requirements imposed by the new kernel, and administrative changes that you must make when migrating an existing system to the 2.6 kernel. It supplements previous whitepapers in the same series about Customizing the 2.6 kernel and porting drivers to the 2.6 kernel.
How to migrate an existing system to Linux kernel 2.6
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Interesting read, althought the ease of moving to 2.6 will be dependent on what your distribution does. An apt-get or a urpmi away.
You sir are correct. I went from a base 9.2 Mandrake system with at the patches downloaded to a Cooker MDK beta/RC 10 system with kernel 2.6.3-2 via urpmi gui tools in the Mandrake Control Center. All was pretty painless once I found a good and reliable cooker mirror.
TBelow is where the RPM’s are located for Cooker. If you copy and paste this into a console as root and hit enter you’ll get access to the most up to date Cooker rpm’s. Of course you must be careful because Cooker is bleeding edge. Recently I downloaded kernel 2.6.3-1 and it had a slight bug in it but it was updated quickly enough with kernel 2.6.3-2 in about a hour. Overall I have been satisfied with my Cooker experince. Of course I made sure that key elements like KDE became stable in cooker and I did not play with the RC rpms when they were out. Common sense says that if the rpm has the words or letters BETA, ALPHA, or RC you should stay away from it at all cost. Even if this means that you can’t upgrade other components in your system.
urpmi.addmedia Cooker BEWARE THE BUGS ftp://rpmfind.net/linux/MandrakeCooker/cooker/cooker/Mandrake/RPMS… with ../base/hdlist.cz
Nice article. I just upgraded from 2.4.22 to 2.6.3 last week and I have to say that the 2.6 kernel is truly amazing, and thus worth the time it took to configure.
Is there a standard package of 2.6.3 for slackware? I’m interested in trying the 2.6.x series kernel, but have never attempted a kernel before. Does anyone have any suggestions?
they have the 2.6.3 version in the testing branch under -current
I hope they will release it soon
Funny you guys should happen to post in that order. I just compiled 2.6.3 for slackware from sources. One of you just installed it, and the other is looking for a slack package for it… get it?
Okay, it’s lame irony. If irony at all. I’ll shut up now
More on topic, I think it’s worth noting that some of the newer 2.4 based distros are 2.6 ready – just a compile (or package) away.
Mostly good…except for the fact that the -j option seems to not work when your iptables and kernel versions are “out of sync”. My Mandrake box is the gateway to the net for my other Debian boxes…With 2.4.x, the iptables masq works grandly…when in 2.6.x, the iptables command gives me “illegal option” and it goes away when I remove the -j option. Stinks, but a few others have had the problem and there was no real fix it would seem, outside of doing some installing and tweaking of iptables without guidance.
Not a bad thing for most, but for me, I had to go back to the lame-o 2.4 series. Oh well, KDE 3.2 makes it fast enough. Oh yeah, and the 3 GHz P4 and gig of ram helps too.