Is it true that the following shows that two versions of the kernel are being used? (Is the bold face — the one enclosed in **
showing what is currently loaded / used). Basically, I just created a VM using VMWare Fusion on a Macbook Pro, downloaded Fedora (the current one, which is 17), installed it and did the upgrade it prompted me to do in a window.
(The ones I see are kernel.x86_64 3.3.4-5.fc17 and
kernel.x86_64 3.6.10-2.fc17, so 3.3.4 and 3.6.10 are both running? How come the other kernel parts like headers
, modules
, or tools
don't need to be running?)
$ yum list kernel-*
Loaded plugins: langpacks, presto, refresh-packagekit
(1/2): fedora/primary_db | 14 MB 00:13
(2/2): updates/primary_db | 7.3 MB 00:06
Installed Packages
**kernel.x86_64** 3.3.4-5.fc17 @koji-override-0/$releasever
**kernel.x86_64** 3.6.10-2.fc17 @updates
Available Packages
kernel-debug.x86_64 3.6.10-2.fc17 updates
kernel-debug-devel.x86_64 3.6.10-2.fc17 updates
kernel-debug-modules-extra.x86_64 3.6.10-2.fc17 updates
kernel-devel.x86_64 3.6.10-2.fc17 updates
kernel-doc.noarch 3.6.10-2.fc17 updates
kernel-headers.x86_64 3.6.10-2.fc17 updates
kernel-modules-extra.x86_64 3.6.10-2.fc17 updates
kernel-tools.i686 3.3.4-5.fc17 fedora
kernel-tools.x86_64 3.6.10-2.fc17 updates
[...]
Best Answer
Yum is not showing the running kernel(s)... You cannot have multiple kernels running simultaneously in a single userspace.
Yum is showing you the installed kernels. Most likely, you are running the 3.6.10 kernel, although checking on it is as simple as running
uname -a
.The additional lines are supplementary packages which add additional capabilities to the system. For example, the kernel -devel package is the entire kernel source. This allows you to rebuild the kernel or to build a custom module against that kernel.