[NTLUG:Discuss] Kernel module woes.

[Rick Cook]

On Tuesday 23 July 2002 21:12, Brian wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 23, 2002 at 05:27:49PM -0500, Lance Simmons wrote:
> > I find Debian's package management tools in general helpful and
> > well thought-out, and make-kpkg particularly so. "make-kpkg
> > kernel_image" and "dpkg -i <kernel-image>" (dpkg runs a script that
> > automates updating lilo or grub) makes it simpler to try out new
> > kernels. It's still important to know how to do all the steps
> > independently, I think, but I don't miss doing every step by hand.
>
> What do you do when the kernel fails to boot?  Does dpkg modify lilo
> so that there is a label pointing to the original kernel?  And does
> dpkg overwrite modules for the current kernel, or are they archived
> away just in case?  What happens if the kernel is too big?  Does dpkg
> automatically attempt to build a compressed version?
>

The usual process for Debian when it installs a new kernel-image 
package is to update lilo.conf to make the current default lilo stanza 
an "LinuxOLD" stanza and create a new "Linux" stanza that points to the 
newly installed kernel. If ou have an already installed kernel-image 
with the same version number, the kernel-image package installation 
process gives you the opportunity to move the 
/lib/modules/<kernel-version-being-replaced> directory.

I don't remember what happens in the make-kpkg process if the kernel 
file is too big. I would expect that it would be similar to what 
happens if the kernel compilation fails in any other fashion. The 
package build process fails at that point and no new kernel-image 
package is generated.

It is actually a relatively painless way to handle kernel upgrades 
(though I am still somewhat reluctant to "trust" this process enough to 
use it blindly with a "remote" server).


Rick