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Home Uncategorized How to upgrade the Linux kernel in Fedora 28/29 quickly and easily
How to upgrade the Linux kernel in Fedora 28/29 quickly and easily

Cloud Insidr 2018-06-17 Leave a Comment

How to upgrade the Linux kernel in Fedora 28/29 quickly and easily

As zero-day exploits become increasingly common, keeping the kernel up to date is a top priority.

In CentOS 6.x/7.x and RHEL 6x./7.x, upgrading the Linux Kernel is a painful procedure which requires about a dozen steps. On Fedora, all it takes is a time-saving two-liner. You don’t need to concern yourself with the configuration of the grub boot manager, which is a frequent source of trouble on CentOS and RHEL.

Upgrade your Fedora installation

Update your system:

$ sudo dnf upgrade --refresh

Reboot. Next, install the dnf-plugin-system-upgrade package:

$ sudo dnf install dnf-plugin-system-upgrade

Mainline vs. Stable: download repository definitions

When upgrading your Linux kernel, you are faced with a choice between the mainline and stable branches.

Many critical cyber security fixes make it at first only into the mainline release. It can take two days or more for the mainline kernel to become the stable kernel. If you wanted to apply the most recent security fixes, you would be looking for the mainline branch kernel-vanilla-mainline.  This is the most cutting-edge Linux kernel on Fedora. It is suitable for a  ‘high-risk’ production environment, especially when cyber security is important to your business.

If you were to prioritize stability and insisted that it was more important to (nearly) never break anything, then kernel-vanilla-stable would be your best choice.

Kernel 5.0 is now live on Kernel.org & Fedora 29!
Kernel 5.0 is now live on Kernel.org & Fedora 29!

Download kernel repository definitions

Download the definitions for the Kernel vanilla repositories:

curl -s https://repos.fedorapeople.org/repos/thl/kernel-vanilla.repo | sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/kernel-vanilla.repo

Run this to install the latest mainline (aka pre-release) kernel:

sudo dnf --enablerepo=kernel-vanilla-mainline update

Running the kernel upgrade on Fedora

Either way, installing a Linux kernel upgrade on Fedora 28/29 is a no-brainer. Just two lines of code, which give you peace of mind if you need to always stay “ahead of the curve”. For the mainline kernel:

sudo dnf config-manager --set-enabled kernel-vanilla-mainline
sudo dnf update

For the stable kernel branch:

sudo dnf config-manager --set-enabled kernel-vanilla-stable
sudo dnf update

After the kernel upgrade, reboot.

Verify the upgrade of the Linux Kernel

After the reboot, verify that the kernel upgrade succeeded using the following command:

uname -a

Linux Kernel 5.0 (Fedora 29)
Linux Kernel 5.0 (Fedora 29)

Linus Torvalds: “I am back!” and “the Kernel 5.0 is now ready!”

“At this point,” Linus Torvalds stated, “the Kernel 5.0 is now ready!”.

One thing is for sure, the kernel version numbers are just that: numbers. Not more, not less. Nevertheless, the only thing that really matters is keeping your IT environment secured. Obviously, upgrading the Kernel isn’t everything, but it’s certainly a critical part of it.

 Linus Torvalds receiving 2018 IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronics Award from ICCE 2018 Conference Chair Saraju P. Mohanty, and IEEE President James A. Jefferies at ICCE 2018 on 12 Jan 2018 at Las Vegas.
Linus Torvalds receiving 2018 IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronics Award from ICCE 2018 Conference Chair Saraju P. Mohanty, and IEEE President James A. Jefferies at ICCE 2018 on 12 Jan 2018 at Las Vegas. (This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license; Author Notsoimp2012 )

Filed Under: Linux, Uncategorized Tagged With: CentOS, Fedora, Fedora 28, Linux, Linux Kernel, RHEL, upgrade

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