[CentOS] how long to reboot server ?
Ross Walker
rswwalker at gmail.com
Fri Sep 3 21:15:22 UTC 2010
On Sep 3, 2010, at 4:10 PM, Marko Vojinovic <vvmarko at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Friday, September 03, 2010 18:34:51 Matthew Miller wrote:
>> On Fri, Sep 03, 2010 at 12:17:37PM -0500, Les Mikesell wrote:
>>> Does anyone know if this is special-cased or some config setting? I
>>
>> It's special-cased.
>
> I remember the discussion on the Fedora-list about this a very long time ago,
> and the bottomline is roughly the following:
>
> * when a yum update installs a new kernel, it checks if the total number of
> installed kernels exceeds the installonly_limit parameter
> * if not, everything is ok
> * if yes, the oldest *non-running* kernel is removed and the remaining number
> of kernels is checked again against installonly_limit, and the removal step is
> repeated if they still don't match up.
>
> This was done precisely because it was understood that a currently running
> kernel can be assumed to be stable and bootable. So if you have several
> kernels, run a yum update while the oldest one is running, get a new kernel,
> the extra kernels that will get removed are those "in between". This ensures
> that with any multiple-kernel configuration of yum, there will be at least one
> kernel known to work, as a failsafe.
>
> I believe CentOS just inherited this behavior of yum. Though I might be wrong,
> it seems unlikely that anyone would remove this feature from yum on purpose.
>
> So all in all, you should never be afraid that yum will leave you only with
> untested kernels while updating.
This is good info!
What I am wondering is if there is a way to prevent new kernels from becoming the default by... default?
That way one won't be "pleasantly" surprised that after a long uptime and several updates, that on the next reboot their applications stop working because of a kernel update that hadn't been tested yet.
A way where the admin must manually choose the default kernel.
-Ross
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