Arch Linux

jef

Member

Registered: 2006-01-26

Posts: 18

Upgrade kernel without a reboot?

I was wondering, is it possible to upgrade the kernel using 'pacman -Syu' and then load the new kernel without rebooting the machine? Also, along the same lines (sort of), is it possible to edit the rc.conf file and then re-load the file without a reboot?

Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: Upgrade kernel without a reboot?

Kexec (included in archck kernel). Is would probably be a pain in the ass with the initrd though, and you can't do it while in X.

tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: Upgrade kernel without a reboot?

rc.conf provides data to various initscripts, so it would depend what changes you make. For example, networking changes can be applied by doing

/etc/rc.d/network restart

I suppose you could change to init 1 and then back to 3/5, but even then, I don't think that would do everything - if you removed modules from the MODULES array for example, I don't think they would be unloaded that way.