Category Archives: Kernel

Install a newer kernel in Debian 10 (buster) stable

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When using the latest version of Debian 10 stable, also known as buster, even with all updates installed, by default, you can’t get the most recent kernel via the standard repositories in your package manager. While the idea of using Debian stable is to remain stable and rather conservative, there are several benefits with installing a newer kernel and in some cases it’s the only option to get the OS to support all your hardware. The risk and impact on stability is small and the process is rather simple.

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Install a newer kernel in Debian 9 (stretch) stable

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When using the latest version of Debian 9 stable, even with all updates installed, by default, you can’t get a very recent kernel via the standard repositories in your package manager. While the idea of using Debian stable is to remain stable and rather conservative, there are several benefits with installing a newer kernel and in some cases it’s the only option to get the OS to support all your hardware. The risk and impact on stability is small and the process is rather simple.

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Install a newer kernel in CentOS 7

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When using the latest version of CentOS 7, even with all updates installed, by default, you can’t get a very recent kernel via the standard repositories in your package manager. While the idea is to remain stable and rather conservative, there are several benefits with installing a newer kernel and in some cases it’s the only option to get the OS to support all your hardware. The risk and impact on stability is small and the process is rather simple.

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Linux live kernel patching with kpatch on CentOS 7

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Live or dynamic kernel patching allows you to patch a running kernel with no impact to running applications and without rebooting the system. Since the announcement and release of Linux kernel version 4, live kernel patching got got a lot of extra attention. Most probably this is because there weren’t a lot of big changes that one would expect with an increase in the version number. While v4 of the kernel does introduce some new stuff related to live or dynamic kernel patching, Live kernel patching was and is already available for earlier kernel releases. In this post, I’ll try to explain the differences between the new and old method and more important how to do live patching of a v3 kernel on CentOS 7.

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Complile and use a realtime kernel on CentOS 7 or RHEL 7

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While the need for a realtime kernel or kernel-rt hasn’t been very high recently, there are these special cases where you really need one. A “standard” linux kernel is fast but also balanced in order to treat all workload fair and give each kind of task an equal share of the system resources. A realtime kernel allows you to squeeze that extra bit of performance out of the kernel. It basically allows you to tune it in a more aggressive way in regards to timing and priorities. Since I couldn’t find any clear instructions on how to get a realtime kernel for CentOS 7 and RHEL 7, I decided to write them myself.

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Configure two network cards in a different subnet on RHEL 6, RHEL 7, CentOS 6 and CentOS 7

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When configuring a Linux host running either Red Hat Linux 6, Red Hat Linux 7, CentOS 6 or CentOS7 with two network interface cards (NIC) that each have an IP address in a different network or subnet, you could end up in a situation where one of the IP addresses isn’t reachable outside it’s own network. Both IP’s will be responding to a ping from another host in the same network as those IP addresses but only one is responding to ping from another network. On most other distributions, like Debian, this issue, which is caused by asymmetric routing, doesn’t seem to exist.

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Compile the Huawei ES3000 PCIe SSD driver for CentOS 7 or RHEL7

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The Huawei ES3000 is an SSD accelerator card connected to the PCIe bus which delivers exceptional performance. Today, I found out that Huawei doesn’t provide any ready made drivers to use a Huawei ES3000 PCIe SSD on a system running a Linux kernel > 3.x. This means that it’s not possible to use it on RHEL 7 or CentOS 7 or any other modern Linux distribution that uses a kernel newer than version 2.6.32.63. Fortunately it’s not difficult to compile the driver, install it and start to use the SSD accelerator with a newer kernel.

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Use inotify-tools on CentOS 7 or RHEL 7 to watch files and directories for events

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Today, I discovered that the package inotify-tools is nowhere to be found in standard CentOS7 or RHEL7 repositories. Alternatives like incron seem to be absent as well. The inotify-tools can be used to watch a directory or file for activity and take an action when a file is changed, added, edited or simply read. You can find a workaround (or call it solution) for the absence of the inotify-tools in the repositories here.

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Install and use CentOS 7 or RHEL 7 as KVM virtualization host

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When thinking about virtualization, everybody immediately thinks about VMWare. And it must be said, the product they offer is very decent but also comes with a “decent” price. As an alternative, it’s worth looking into KVM for your virtualization. As with the VMWare product range, KVM offers full virtualization and it can compete with VMWare regarding stability and performance.

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Install a newer kernel in Debian 7.5 (Wheezy) or CentOS 6.5

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When using the latest version of Debian Wheezy or CentOS 6.5, even with all updates installed, by default, you can’t get a very recent kernel via the standard repositories in your package manager. While the idea of both distributions is to remain stable and rather conservative, there are several benefits with installing a newer kernel and in some cases it’s the only option to run one of these distributions. The risk and impact on stability is small and the process is rather simple.

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SSD optimize your Linux

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SSD drives became a common storage-device for most computer enthusiasts and while they have a lot of advantages in comparison with the “traditional” hard disk, it’s main disadvantage is that the write-operations are theoretically limited. This process is called wearing. In order to prevent your SSD from wearing out, to maximize it’s lifespan and to  improve it’s performance, you can performthe following steps:

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