On 1/16/06, Timothy Murphy <tim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > but in my view the default should be to keep the current, working kernel > as the default (as I believe it used to be). This makes for a very poor default for systems managed by novice fedora users. Novice users may not realize that they need to reconfigure their grub to take advantage of a security update kernel. Its very important that the default configuration is one that makes booting into security kernel updates as automatic as possible. For people with enough experience using Fedora to competently manage multiple remote systems, the configuration file /etc/sysconfig/kernel can be used to disable this default. > Also I don't see why any old kernels should be removed automatically. > Surely it is easy enough to do that if one wants to? Its actually not as easy as you think for novice users. The kernel is rather special in a lot of ways, including the parallel package installation mechanism which is used to install kernel packages. Novice fedora users may not understand that the package managers are handling the kernels in a special way compared to other packages. Novice fedora users may never realize that there are multiple kernels installed and it is quite possible in the lifetime of a normal fedora release to install so many kernels that /boot runs out of space if the default partitioning is used. This sort of out of space condition leads to confusion, confusion that can very well lead to big problems when a novice user attempts to clean up the space. Watching novice users come into #fedora looking for help cleaning up there system because they attempted to remove kernels correctly isn't fun at all. It's a lot easier to explain to them how to boot into their older kernel from the grub menu and help them troubleshoot the new kernel, if the new kernel fails to boot correctly. For people, including myself, who want to keep older kernels around the configuration file /etc/yum/pluginconf.d/installonlyn.conf is provided in which the defaults can be overridden. > I run yum automatically on a remote machine, and have had some problems > with new kernels being installed and run automatically. Please understand that your situation isn't the situation that is designed for when defaults are established. You have the ability to reconfigure both the installonlyn plugin in yum which removes old kernels as well as th ability to reconfigure whether the new kernel is the new boot default in grub by reconfiguring /etc/sysconfig/kernel. -jef -- fedora-test-list mailing list fedora-test-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-test-list