Do you HAVE TO upgrade a Linux kernel?

jibbajabba

Might be a stupid question.
When upgrading a Linux server but they cannot really afford a reboot, is it good enough to install every other security patch but just leave the kernel ?

Is there any good argument why you should still upgrade the kernel ?

Basically this server in question has an uptime of over 500 days and has volume groups with multiple TBs of data. Due to the high uptime it is very likely that a filesystem check is forced upon reboot which will take A LONG time ...

tiersten

It depends on what changes have been made to the kernel. If it is new features or bug fixes to code that you're not using then you're probably okay. If it is security fixes or changes made to prevent corruption then you should do the upgrade. You'll have to weigh up the pros and cons for each particular upgrade.

You should be able to disable the periodic fsck with whatever the parameter tuning tool is for your filesystem.

alan2308

Not knowing which distro or filesystem you're using on said volumes. the simplest way to disable fsck on boot is to go into /etc/fstab and change the very last digit on the line of the volume(s) you don't want to fsck to 0. Any other digit specifies the order in which they get fsck'ed.

I would definitely consider upgrading the kernel. A certainly large number of bugs and security issues have been addressed in the past 500 days.