Arch Linux

anadyr

Member

Registered: 2005-02-10

Posts: 225

kernel update necessary?

I have a simple question: I run a fairly old (7 months) kernel 2.6.29 kernel, and I really don't want to update (because it breaks starting wireless at boot; I opened another topic for that a few weeks ago). Therefore I added kernel26 to IgnorePkg in pacman.conf.
Can I safely use "pacman -Syu" all the time? As of now, I regularly do pacman -Syu, but I have the feeling that at some point the kernel might becomes "outdated" in some way or another. Is that possible?

grey

Member

From: Europe

Registered: 2007-08-23

Posts: 679

Re: kernel update necessary?

Would kernel26-lts work for you? It is at  2.6.27.39-1 at the moment.

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Xyne

Administrator/PM

Registered: 2008-08-03

Posts: 6,963

Website

Re: kernel update necessary?

Some packages might eventually break if they internally depend on a later kernel version without an explicit dependency on it (i.e. pacman doesn't know that foo requires an older version). If that happens, you can just downgrade to the previous version of the package provided that you haven't cleared your cache.

That stated, I would focus on getting wireless working with the latest version of the kernel to avoid problems in the future.

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lilsirecho

Veteran

Registered: 2003-10-24

Posts: 5,000

Re: kernel update necessary?

Perhaps, as I do, do the upgrade day- by- day but pay attention to the NEWS ITEMS which sometimes alert you to what needs to be done when upgrading.

If using Kde for example, it has been modified in upgrades to a modular form.  It usually runs 350+ mb in downloads.

If not using the big kde and gnome, you should be good to go with the caveat that video cards are a special case.

UUID is the best way to avoid kernel panics due to device ID quirks.

A large download list should be expected, you can certainly enter the command and survey the list before commiting to the download.  The pacman upgrade occurs firstly and separately should you go for the download.

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anadyr

Member

Registered: 2005-02-10

Posts: 225

Re: kernel update necessary?

Thanks for all the information.
I have a fairly simple system with fluxbox as window manager, so that should be OK. Furthermore I use openchrome, which is not dependent on the kernel I believe (like nvidia).
The post on the forum about the wireless issue is here.