Carl Edwards wrote:

Howdy,

Can anyone point me to a walk through on upgrading the kernel? I can't seem to find anything other than lines like "but for best results upgrade the kernel." So if any one knows of a good online how-to i would appreciate it.

Thanks, -Carl

When I first started playing with LinuxPPC a year ago, messing with the kernel frightened the life out of me. I'm not sure if it's the ease of the SUSE distribution, but these days, I have overcome my fear. Personally though, unlike with applications, I would only upgrade the kernel if I need to. With the kernel, my approach is the usual, 'if it isn't broken, don't fix it'..... The RPMs on the suse.com ftp site are the easiset way to upgrade your kernel. Even if you don't want to use those RPMs <ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/ppc/kernel/>, you can roll your own kernel <http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/>, patch it with Olaf's patches <http://penguinppc.org/~olaf/linux-2.4.2/> and build your vmlinux. Clear instructions for this are in the SUSE manual you bought with the dist. or can be found here: < ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/ppc/7.0/docu/book-en.pdf> (page 295). If you prefer to use kernel sources that are being worked on by developers for ppc and not just the plain vanilla Linux sources, your best start is here: <http://kernel.xorsis.com/>. If you are happy with just the RPMs, I would still suggest you get the sources from kernel.org and patch ('man patch' for instructions on patching) it and place it in /usr/src/ and make a symbolic link called 'linux' to the new kernel sources directory. Often, when building an application from sources, it needs to use the kernel sources and you must have the correct sources available. As far as I know, the SUSE kernel RPMs are built with kernel.org sources. Correct me if I am wrong! You also need to make sure that your yaboot.conf file points to the new kernel otherwise it will look around for vmlinux-2.2.16 or whatever kernel you are upgrading from when vmlinux-2.4 is sitting in the /boot directory. DO THIS BEFORE YOU TRY TO REBOOT THE FIRST TIME! As I mentioned previously today, with the 2.4.x kernels, you must upgrade modutils and ppp to 2.4, too. The modules caused me some grief for a while, but editing /etc/modules.conf, it works well now. Upgrading to 2.2.18, is very smooth and trouble free on my iMac DV SE. If anybody thinks the above is incorrect in ANY way, let us know. I'm stll learning, too! good luck joss -- http://www.josswinn.org -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GPA/ED$/GH d- s+:+ a- C+(++) UL P L++ E-(E) W++ N+ o? K- w? O? M V? PS+++ PE- Y+ PGP+ t 5? X R !tv b DI-- D- G- e+++ h r++ y+ ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------