On 10 July 2012 10:15, Mateusz Marzantowicz <mmarzantowicz(a)osdf.com.pl> wrote:
On 10.07.2012 09:47, Ian Malone wrote:
> On 10 July 2012 08:33, Mateusz Marzantowicz <mmarzantowicz(a)osdf.com.pl> wrote:
>> How can I reduce the number of installed kernels to only one on my
>> Fedora 17 systems? I'm asking about automated approach without the need
>> of manual package removal.
>>
>> I haven't compiled new kernels myself for a very long time so I don't
>> think I'll need more then one kernel installed.
>>
>> Now, I'm using package-cleanup --oldkernel but it's still cleaning up
>> the mess that I want to avoid.
>>
> You do want two kernels installed at least in case an update fails to
> boot. The installonly_limit parameter in /etc/yum.conf manages it, if
> you changed it to 1 then all older kernels would be removed by a yum
> update. Actually, I think possibly the running kernel will not be
> removed, so maybe it's not possible to get down to 1 that way. Maybe
> create a service for startup which does the cleanup? That way the old
> kernel wouldn't be removed until you successfully booted into the new
> one (but that still wouldn't catch things like broken video drivers or
> needing to add kernel parameters to work around a problem).
>
Thanks, a lot. But now one thing bothers me even more. Is it possible
that broken kernel which won't boot or cause any other serious problems
is released in Fedora 16 or 17? I know that in Rawhide something might
go wrong, but in 16, 17?
In general kernels will boot, they wouldn't get past the
updates-testing and karma procedures otherwise. However it's possible
that a change is introduced which will fail on your hardware. For
example my laptop is currently on the F17 release kernel because of
this bug <
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=834318>. The
install_only limit keeps that number of kernels installed, so you can
roll back if that does happen.
Additionally if you use a binary module for any reason (cue posts
saying you shouldn't) then any given kernel update might break it.
--
imalone
http://ibmalone.blogspot.co.uk