[Techtalk] kernel upgrades

[Rebecca J. Walter]

On Fri, 2001-10-12 at 01:39, Glen Strom wrote:
> 
> 
> On 11 Oct 2001, at 14:13, Kai MacTane wrote:
> 
> > >Here's what ls -l /boot/vmlinuz* shows:
> > >
> > >-rw-r--r--    1 root   root    914613 Jan 24  2001 /boot/vmlinuz
> > >-rw-r--r--    1 root   root    914613 Aug 28 20:18 /boot/vmlinuz.suse
> > 
> > Same size? Weird. I suspect they may actually *be* the same. Try
> > 
> >     md5sum /boot/vmlinuz
> >     md5sum /boot/vmlinuz.suse
> > 
> > If they give you the same checksum, I'd figure the kernels are
> > identical. (I would then have no idea why this situation is happening;
> > it seems to be a SuSE installation standard, given that someone else
> > is seeing the same stuff, but it makes little or no sense to me. Maybe
> > it's a backup copy in case of accidental deletion? Maybe Rebecca
> > Walter can give us an idea of what's going on.)
> > 
> The check sums are the same:
> 672eeb2e6b1a15d24cabe8f8115574cd  /boot/vmlinuz
> 672eeb2e6b1a15d24cabe8f8115574cd  /boot/vmlinuz.suse
> 

It should be in the SuSE Reference Manual.  It is a default fallback
kernel.  So you have something to boot if you accidently mess up your
linux kernel. :-)  So it is an extra security measure to protect people
who neglect to backup their kernels. :-)