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I have just downloaded CentOS 5.3.

The kernel version is 2.6.18.xx However, when I updated the kernel version has not changed. Still 2.6.18. Unless something went wrong with the updates.

The most up to date kernel is 2.6.31.xx I was thinking shouldn't it update to this new kernel?

On my Fedora 12 I have 2.6.31. I know that Fedora is bleeding edge technology. However, I thought the kernel of 2.6.18 would have been updated as least a little. It seems to be very old.

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  • Actually, 2.6.31 is considered stable and is run on many mainstream distros, notably Ubuntu.
    – marcusw
    Feb 7, 2010 at 14:20

4 Answers 4

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Distributions like CentOS are more enterprise orientated, so don't expect to end up on the most recent kernel. CentOS is essentially a recompiled Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and RHEL sticks with a known-good kernel for quite a while. They do, however, back-port security fixes into their kernel as necessary.

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What update method are you using? If you're building from source, some additional tweaking is involved. If you want to avoid the tweaking, you can simply run yum update kernel.

Also note that a reboot is required to run the new kernel.

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  • Sorry, I should have explained better, I wasn't building from source. I did: yum upgrade. However, I think there was a break in my Internet so it didn't get installed. However, am I right that will be update to the latest kernel which is 2.6.31?
    – ant2009
    Feb 7, 2010 at 8:46
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    It should. To confirm you can run yum list updates 'kernel*' to see available kernel upgrades.
    – user1931
    Feb 7, 2010 at 8:52
  • Hello, I have just checked the kernel version uname -a and I can confirm that it is still 2.6.18. No change. I have done yum update kernel. And it saids "not packages marked for update." When I run yum list updates 'kernel*'. It gives an error 'Error: No matching Packages to list'. Thanks.
    – ant2009
    Feb 7, 2010 at 10:13
  • If there is no available update you may be running the latest. Refer to developmentalinsanity's answer for more info.
    – user1931
    Feb 7, 2010 at 14:41
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I quasi-regularly update my kernel at home, with CentOS repositories. The latest available kernel is 2.6.18-164.11.1.el5.centos.plus as of this writing for CentOS.

If you want to get 2.6.32, then you'll have to compile from source, as other posters have mentioned.

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You might try CentOS 5.4. In general, once a new version of a distro is released, the old ones only get security fixes.

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