Linux – How to switch from a custom Linux kernel to a distribution kernel

debiankernellinuxlvm

In my spare time, I help administer a hosted Debian Linux server that serves a variety of websites and hosts email for a few people. It doesn't see huge volumes of traffic, but of course we want to do things properly. However, when we first got this server, someone rolled a custom kernel for us which allowed us to do various things that we wanted to do (like LVM, RAID etc). That's now a few years ago and of course there's various security bugs been fixed etc and we'd rather just be operating from a stock kernel that is kept up-to-date.

The problem is that we don't have a list of the features we enabled when we rolled the custom kernel and a couple of attempts to use a new one have resulted in a kernal that won't boot. So the question is – how do we go about using the stock Debian kernels whilst still being able to have all the functionality we depend on? What information do I need to gather first, and then what are the steps to make it happen?

Best Answer

First, you need to assess what exactly you require your kernel to do. This means building a list of:

  • Every piece of hardware in your system
  • Hardware-related functions, like LVM and RAID
  • Networking functions, like routing, VPNs, wireless support, etc.
  • Filesystems, especially your root filesystem
  • Other special kernel-level needs

Next, you should try to figure out how your current kernel is handling them, and then try translating that to a newer kernel. For this, you can look at:

  • The outputs of lspci and dmesg - this will help you catalog hardware and what the current kernel does on boot
  • What modules are loaded - look at lsmod
  • The kernel configuration, if available - sometimes this exists at /proc/config.gz or in /boot

Once you know your hardware, and how the current kernel is dealing with it, you can roll a new kernel from the Debian sources. Focus on getting a kernel that boots first. Once you can get into a shell with your new kernel, you can take an incremental approach to the rest of your features. Recompile, adding features or drivers as necessary (perhaps as modules to speed up this process), then test each new kernel.

One last word about RAID. You should be careful about your current RAID setup, if it's software RAID - newer kernels and systems will use mdadm for managing that kind of thing, whereas older systems tend to use the raidtab approach. Your approach will change how you deal with RAID in-kernel, especially the autodetection bits. Take a look at the excellent Software RAID Howto for more info.

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