[ale] Wanted: Kernel Tweaking Help for the Uninitiated

Davis, Ricardo C. RCDavis at intermedia.com
Tue Feb 20 16:21:09 EST 2001


Hi all...

When I got the announcement regarding security issues with RH Linux 6.2
(http://www.redhat.com/support/errata/RHSA-2001-013.html), I dutifully
responded as a good netizen and downloaded the kernel RPMs and did a "rpm
-Fvh" to update my system which was running v. 2.2.14 (pre-installed by the
OEM).

A week later, I try to restore from a SCSI tape drive (/dev/st0) that has
been performing daily backups with no error messages.  However, I only to
get the message "device not found" when I "dd if=/dev/st0"!

On further inspection of the boot log, it appears that when the system
starts up it recognizes the device but the kernel doesn't assign it a device
ID.  When I took a look at an identical server that was off-network and did
not have the kernel upgrade applied, it appears that the kernel upgrade was
my undoing.  The bad news is that when I installed the kernel RPMs, rpm
removed the old kernels (single and dual processor) and modified my
lilo.conf to point to the new ones instead.  It also did not change the
"initrd" files that were part of the old kernel configuration.  It appears
that the old kernel had the module(s) necessary to take care of my tape
drive problem.

So now, after burning up a day on this problem, I turn to that fountain of
wisdom known as ALE for assistance.  In particular, can someone provide some
links to:

- Intro to kernel maintenance (on Red Hat if possible)
- Do's and Don'ts when upgrading kernels using RPM

I'm ready and eager to learn -- any (constructive) help is welcome and
appreciated.


-RD
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