Linux Linux!!!

Today I had a requirement to change the kernel of a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, customer issue from Sweden. Huh!. I am linux freak since my college days, so I jumped into action immediately. I had some past experience changing/upgrading the linux kernels of Red hat in college on beautiful and brand new laptops. Wow! Sounds terrific though. Any way I started searching for a kernel. I found one src.rpm.

Here the drama begins, I run the rpm and start searching for the source code. Man, its such a pain. I found the source under /usr/src/redhat/BUILD/..

Next is to make the source code. "Make" looked as if it ran fine. But nope, it dint. I did make install and saw that some thing happend in the /boot folder. I saw that i have vmlinz image. Hurray, success. I just had to change the grub.conf to point to the new image and restart the box. Then what, KERNEL PANIC. He he he he. What a jerk you are, said the linux box. I was missing the initrd image. How should I get the image. Oh forget it, I am not working on this customer issue any more. I will say we are not supporting that kernel and that ends the chapter.

Wait a min says one of my bosses, and points me to a link. Life saver. I could find .rpm there. That means no source code, that mean no make, that mean no make install. Cool. I ran the rpm. Wala, i had the vmliuz and initrd image in the /boot folder along with updated grub.conf. Superb. Restart the linux with new kernel and it works excellent. Supercool. Customer will be happy.

Oh, by the way, here is the link for the rpm, just in case if you need. http://download.filesystems.org/linux/centos/updates/5-i386/RPMS/kernel-2.6.18-92.1.22.el5.i686.rpm

That was one hell of an experience. :)