Hi Jean, On Tue, Nov 20, 2018 at 10:40 PM Jean Delvare <jdelvare@xxxxxxx> wrote: > > Hi Masahiro, Michal, > > When I run "make install", if a kernel by the same version number + > flavor string already exists, a backup is created with ".old" appended. > Over time, this adds many entries to my boot menu, makes some package > updates take much longer (e.g. when all initrds must be regenerated), > and ultimately confuses grub2, which fails to find the matching modules > directory under /lib/modules. > > You could argue that grub2 could be fixed to find the right modules > directory, but in fact there is no guarantee that the modules built for > the new kernel are fully compatible with the old kernel. Keeping a > backup copy of the old modules is also not possible, because both > kernels have the same $(uname -r) and therefore the modules of both > kernels must live under the same /lib/modules/$(uname -r), which > collides. > > Given that, is there really any practical value in saving a backup of > old kernels? I'm doing kernel development for 15 years and I can't > remember ever booting one of these ".old" kernels. If my latest > development kernel doesn't work for any reason, I will just boot back > to the distribution kernel. > > Therefore I am asking, can we change "make install" so that it does NOT > create a backup copy of an existing kernel? I think your suggestion makes sense, but "make install" is basically implemented by arch-specific shell script. (For example, arch/x86/boot/install.sh) Will you talk to the maintainers of architecture you are interested in? (or send it to linux-arch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx) > Thanks, > -- > Jean Delvare > SUSE L3 Support -- Best Regards Masahiro Yamada
