20.4. Performing the Upgrade

⁠20.4. Performing the Upgrade

After retrieving all of the necessary packages, it is time to upgrade the existing kernel.

Keep the old kernel when performing the upgrade

It is strongly recommended that you keep the old kernel in case there are problems with the new kernel.

At a shell prompt, change to the directory that contains the kernel RPM packages. Use -i argument with the rpm command to keep the old kernel. Do not use the -U option, since it overwrites the currently installed kernel, which creates boot loader problems. For example:

rpm -ivh kernel-kernel_version.arch.rpm

The next step is to verify that the initial RAM disk image has been created. See Section 20.5, “Verifying the Initial RAM Disk Image” for details.