Kernel versions, xen, grub.conf, yum upgrades

Jonathan Ryshpan jonrysh at pacbell.net
Tue Jul 10 18:56:24 UTC 2007


I recently looked at my grub.conf file (attached), and noticed some odd
things about it.  The system is vanilla FC7 with latest upgrades; the
kernel has be upgraded a number of times.  The odd things are:

(1) The default kernel for loading appears to be an xen version.  Why is
this?  I gather that xen is a little more flexible but less efficient
than the standard kernel.  I never use this flexibility, as most users
never do -- why is this the default for loading?

(2) The default kernel is not the most recent, not even the most recent
xen kernel.  Is this correct?  Should I edit grub.conf?

The date on grub.conf is June 23, which appears to be the date of the
last grub release, so (I suppose) that grub.conf was modified by rpm as
part of the release process for grub, and probably also for kernels,
i.e. rpm is modifying grub.conf in a way that someone thinks is best.

Any info will be appreciated - jon

-------------- next part --------------
# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE:  You have a /boot partition.  This means that
#          all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
#          root (hd0,0)
#          kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/sda3
#          initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/sda
default=2
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
password --md5 <xxx>
title Fedora (2.6.20-2925.11.fc7xen)
	root (hd0,0)
	kernel /xen.gz-2.6.20-2925.11.fc7
	module /vmlinuz-2.6.20-2925.11.fc7xen ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
	module /initrd-2.6.20-2925.11.fc7xen.img
title Fedora (2.6.21-1.3228.fc7)
	root (hd0,0)
	kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.21-1.3228.fc7 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
	initrd /initrd-2.6.21-1.3228.fc7.img
title Fedora (2.6.20-2925.9.fc7xen)
	root (hd0,0)
	kernel /xen.gz-2.6.20-2925.9.fc7 
	module /vmlinuz-2.6.20-2925.9.fc7xen ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
	module /initrd-2.6.20-2925.9.fc7xen.img
title Fedora-base (2.6.21-1.3194.fc7)
	root (hd0,0)
	kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.21-1.3194.fc7 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
	initrd /initrd-2.6.21-1.3194.fc7.img
title Windows
	rootnoverify (hd0,1)
	chainloader +1


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