I have a Laptop with SuSE 7.2 from CD's on (as well as a lot of my own stuff). It works Ok so I don't want to play with what I don't have to. However as i'm about to take it on the road with me, I believe it would be wise to patch it up with at least the security patches. Questions: 1- I start at the oldest patch from the 7.2 list and move forward, or can I skip some? What command works as the "instruction of how to update rpm packages" frankly confuses the hell out of me, especially when taken with some of the message threads that have been floating around on RPM Update problems? Can I just use yast to do the updates instead? and 2- Do I need to, or would it be wise to also update the kernel from 2.4.4 to 2.4.16 or .19? Kernel update process as i understand it is:- A- # cp /boot/vmlinuz /boot/vmlinuz.old # cp /boot/initrd /boot/initrd.old - I don't have this at present??????? This backs up your old stuff in case of ?major problems. B- Download the kernel and other relevant updated rpms (such as modutils, pcmcia, etc) from the relevant kernel directory C- rpm -Uvh kernal_new_version_you_just_downloaded.rpm - add --force if needed (Can't I use yast for this, I take it I do this to the other patch rpms before.) D- mk_initrd lilo Reboot and done. regards and thanks in advance for all help. scsijon acknowledgements to wolfi, jon, ben, joe, stewart, etc, and of course SuSE Masters Lenz and Hubert.