[MeeGo-dev] RFC : should new kernel be installed in parallel on a "stable" release ?

[Arjan van de Ven]

  On 9/27/2010 5:57 AM, Frederic Crozat wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> as part of maintenance ongoing on MeeGo 1.0.x, we discovered each new
> kernel release are installed on MeeGo in parallel to previously
> installed kernel (in libzypp configuration, /etc/zypp/zypp.conf).
>
> While it is a good idea for a development PoV, on a "supported" end-user
> device, it might not be such a good idea (for instance, if all disk
> space become full due to old kernel packages installed). And moreover,
> extlinux default configuration makes very tricky to change default
> kernel at startup (I haven't been able to stop countdown using
> keystroke, when it is set to 0 ).
>
> So, do you think this configuration should be changed for a "release"
> version of MeeGo ? And do you see a problem if "vendors" are changing
> this configuration to ensure kernel are "upgraded" and not installed
> "side by side" when doing maintenance upgrade ?
>

yum has the feature that it will leave the last 3 kernels installed...  
(as well as the currently running one).

this is very important so that you have a fail safe; you can always boot 
back into a known good kernel,
this helps support a lot.

I assumed that zypper has a similar feature to yum; if not that's a gap 
that we need to address urgently with feature development.