Manually Upgrading The Kernel; Overview Of Kernel Packages - Red Hat ENTERPRISE LINUX 4 System Administration Manual

Chapter 36.

Manually Upgrading the Kernel

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux kernel is custom built by the Red Hat kernel team to ensure its integrity
and compatibility with supported hardware. Before Red Hat releases a kernel, it must first pass a
rigorous set of quality assurance tests.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux kernels are packaged in RPM format so that they are easy to upgrade
and verify using the Red Hat User Agent, or the up2date command. The Red Hat User Agent
automatically queries the Red Hat Network servers and determines which packages need to be
updated on your machine, including the kernel. This chapter is only useful for those individuals that
require manual updating of kernel packages, without using the up2date command.
Warning
Please note, that building a custom kernel is not supported by the Red Hat Global
Services Support team, and therefore is not explored in this manual.
Tip
Use of up2date is highly recommended by Red Hat for installing upgraded kernels.
For more information on Red Hat Network, the Red Hat User Agent, and up2date, refer to
Chapter 16, Red Hat Network.

36.1. Overview of Kernel Packages

Red Hat Enterprise Linux contains the following kernel packages (some may not apply to your
architecture):
• kernel — Contains the kernel and the following key features:
• Uniprocessor support for x86 and Athlon systems (can be run on a multi-processor system, but
only one processor is utilized)
• Multi-processor support for all other architectures
• For x86 systems, only the first 4 GB of RAM is used; use the kernel-hugemem package for x86
systems with over 4 GB of RAM
• kernel-devel — Contains the kernel headers and makefiles sufficient to build modules against
the kernel package.
• kernel-hugemem — (only for i686 systems) In addition to the options enabled for the kernel
package, the key configuration options are as follows:
• Support for more than 4 GB of RAM (up to 64 GB for x86)
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