It was suggested to update my Debian Squeeze kernel to something more recent. We chose 2.6.38 and used Debian Backports to install linux-image-2.6.38-bpo.2-amd64 following these instructions summarized below.
nano /etc/apt/sources.list
Add the line below to the bottom of the file.
deb http://backports.debian.org/debian-backports squeeze-backports main
Update repositories
apt-get update
Install the backport and the kernel.
apt-get install -t squeeze-backports linux-image-2.6.38-bpo.2-amd64
Rebooted and voila! – system showing that is is running 2.6.38.
Now, a few days later, I do a
aptitude update
aptitude safe-upgrade
And get the following:
The following packages will be upgraded:
aptitude base-files ca-certificates grub-common libgssapi-krb5-2 libgssrpc4 libk5crypto3 libkadm5clnt-mit7
libkadm5srv-mit7 libkdb5-4 libkrb5-3 libkrb5support0 libpcap0.8 libssl0.9.8 linux-image-2.6.32-5-amd64
openssh-client openssh-server openssl tzdata usbutils
The following packages are RECOMMENDED but will NOT be installed:
apt-xapian-index aptitude-doc-cs aptitude-doc-en aptitude-doc-es aptitude-doc-fi aptitude-doc-fr
aptitude-doc-ja firmware-linux-free libparse-debianchangelog-perl
20 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 39.8 MB of archives. After unpacking 3,830 kB will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?]
Is aptitude is trying to go back to the old linux-image?
current sources.list is pretty standard:
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main
deb http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ squeeze-updates main
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ squeeze-updates main
deb http://packages.dotdeb.org stable all
deb http://backports.debian.org/debian-backports squeeze-backports main
Best Answer
Not really, as far as I can tell. Aptitude seems to be telling you it'll install a new revision of the 2.6.32 kernel you still have installed, but that doesn't mean it'll make it the active version (the one you get by default when booting). You can confirm this by installing the suggested package and then looking at your /boot/grub/menu.lst file.
If you're sure you won't ever go back to 2.6.32 you can remove those packages by the regular means. Something like this:
apt-get remove linux-image-2.6.32.*
Be careful of any unexpected warnings, of course.
Note that you can use apt pinning to handle the backports more comfortably/safely without having to use the
-t
parameter to apt-get/aptitude.In your case I'd try something like this (untested):