removing installed kernel question

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1 comment, last by Halsafar 18 years, 6 months ago
After reading up on freeing diskspace I found that I had 6 different kernels installed. I removed 3 older ones knowing that I'll never use them. But now I am left with 3 that resemble the current kernal I am using: Using (uname -r): kernel-smp-2.6.12-1.1456_FC4 Remaining (rpm -qa|grep kernel): kernel-smp-devel-2.6.12-1.1456_FC4 kernel-smp-2.6.12-1.1456_FC4 kernel-2.6.12-1.1456_FC4 Removing with rpm -e kernel.2.(version) Question: Is it safe to remove the rest minus the one I'm using? Wut is the devel mean? What does smp mean?
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The kernel-smp-devel package is only headers and makefiles that you might need to build modules against the smp-kernel. It's propably not needed unless you're compiling your own kernel or building modules. The kernel-smp is a kernel for smp-systems, ie. if you have a computer with more than one processor, or a processor with hyperthreading or similar. The last kernel is the normal kernel used for most systems.

I won't promise you that it's safe to remove these kernels, but if you have a normal computer you should only need the kernel-2.6.12-1.1456_FC4 package. The devel-package might be needed to compile things like the nvidia driver if you're using that, but make sure that you use the devel-package that belongs to the kernel you're using.

Another option is to compile you own kernel, and remove all kernel-packages. It's not really that hard, there's plenty of information on the net, but if you're new to linux it's maybe not such a great idea.

Anyway, I hope I answered you question, otherwise you'll just have to ask some more [smile]
Yes, thank you.

I am using a multi-processor hyper-threading computer so SMP is the default.

As for compiling my own kernel... I don't quite think I'm ready for that task.

Maybe I'll install Linux again on one of junk comps and try it there instead of risking my working system.

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