Re: Etch to Lenny, two kernel options now, why?

Quoth Andre:
Hi there

I recently moved to Lenny from Etch via dist-upgrade. Now I got two
kernel options in grub available for boot. Doesn't a dist-upgrade mean
that the old kernel is quite useless with the new system (with all its
new libraries and stuff)? If so, how do I get rid off Etch's leftovers?

No, the Kernel doesn't depend on those libraries. Evenything you need to boot a
machine is in /boot and /lib/modules/`uname -r`. From then on, any init-process
may get called, which will most likely depend on _a lot_ of libs, but that's
fine. (Actually, you wouldn't even need /lib/modules - if it wasn't for Debian's
default initrd-policy. Let's not start a flame-war over that, I don't like it,
but for a distro's stock-kernel it's maybe the best solution. But it's why
you'll need the kernel's modules, too, when you boot.)

Just one side note: never ever upgrade to a new kernel without having an old
kernel around in case something goes wrong. I've hit _stable revisions_ that,
with the *same* .config, wouldn't boot my machine. And minor revisions are even
more dangerous - a friend's laptop wouldn't boot with anything between .21 and
.23 - but is fine with .20 and 24-rc4.

Having mulitple entries in grub isn't really much of a distraction. And the
kernel images don't eat a lot of memory, too. Mine is currently 1.8 MiB,
/lib/modules is 12 Mib, but that's only because nvidia's such a fat-ass hog.
Otherwise it would be a bout 3 MiB.

So, just ignore them and you might be very happy to have an older kernel lying
around in case a new one explodes on you.

Aleks

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