Thursday, April 1, 2010

Sabayon Kernel Upgrade Procedure

For those that know me, you probably have heard me talk about Sabayon and praise it for its flexibility, hardware support, good looks, humor (yes humor...see below for a nice April's Fools joke), and most importantly ease of use.


One of the nice things about Sabayon is that the kernel updating is quiet simple, given the complexities involved with the kernel. Below I outline a general procedure to help avoid any headaches one might have when updating their kernel.

1. Grab a list of drivers that will need to be updated:
#equo query installed $(uname -r)

2. Download/Install the kernel:
#equo install sys-kernel/linux-sabayon

3. Install all packages listed in Step 1 (make sure to remove the version info otherwise you will just reinstall the current outdated package)

4. Verify that the kernel is selected:
#eselect kernel list

5. If the new kernel is not selected with '*', set it with:
#eselect kernel set [NUMBER]

6. Also make sure opengl has the correct driver selected with:
#eselect opengl list

7. Correct the opengl selection as needed with:
#eselect opengl set [NUMBER]

8. Make the new kernel the default option in grub (if so desired) by going to /boot/grub/menu.lst

9. Inside menu.lst change "default" to the the corresponding option.

10. It is also a good idea to run a dependency test and library test with:
#equo deptest
#equo libtest

And you should be good to go...NOT SO DIFFICULT IS IT?