Is it really this easy to upgrade the kernel?

[psych-major]

My Slackware install was running kernel 2.4.29, and I noticed on the changelogs that Pat upgraded to 2.4.31. I use swaret, so on my test system, I decided to take the kernel out of the EXCLUDE list and see what happened.

Swaret downloaded and installed all the kernel stuff, after which I rebooted. The boot failed, which did not surprise me as I had forgotten to update lilo. I have another kernel installed for using a fibre channel adapter, so I booted that, updated lilo, and rebooted. My new 2.4.31 kernel came up fine with the exception of alsa, which also didn't surprise me as I expected to have to recompile it for the new kernel.

So, alsa is recompiled and working, and everything else seems fine. Is it really this easy, or am I totally missing something?!

[quip]

There might be a gotcha or two, but for the most part, I bet that's all you need. People who don't have the time (or experience, or inclination) probably don't want to let an auto-update script upgrade their kernel packages et al, but since it's all coming from Pat, I don't see why not...

BTW, did you try upgrading to the new alsa before recompiling (alsa-driver-1.0.8_2.4.31-i486-1.tgz) I would have thought it would work...:confused:

[psych-major]

Yes, I was on the new alsa already, and I probably didn't need to recompile, probably just needed to do depmod -a again, but had already recompiled when I figured that out! :rolleyes:

This is all well and good on the test system, but I hesitate to try it on my laptop where also I have madwifi running...

[quip]

True; it is a little bit of a hassle to recompile my wifi drivers (hostap) and video (nvidia) any time I upgrade the kernel. I usually just get a stock kernel and build my own, but it would be nice if I didn't have to rebuild those packages when I upgrade the kernel. Of course, I don't upgrade that often...

[psych-major]

I forgot anout my nVidia driver on the laptop! I guess that will be staying at 2.4.29 for a while!