core 4 upgrade question

[Raymond Norton]

A while back I attempted to do a core 4 install on a Visonman server, but
it went into a kernel panic right away. I finally installed core 3. Now
one of my software packages is designed for MYSQL 4, rather than 3.23. I
though the best way to take care of this requirement would be to upgrade
to core 4. Is there a way to do this, and still keep the existing kernel I
am using now?

Raymond