Linux16 /vmlinuz-4.3.86_64 root=/dev/mapper/centos_linux-demo-root ro crashkernel=auto rd.lvm.lv=centos_linux-demo/swap rd.lvm.lv=centos_linux-demo/root rhgb quiet LANG=en_US.UTF-8 bug Now, we check how the different kernels are listed in the GRUB configuration file: ~]# grep vmlinuz /boot/grub2/grub.cfg Yum offers us to install the 4.3 version (as of November 2015). Now, we enable the repository (vi /etc//elrepo.repo and set enabled to 1 for ) then, we need to remove the old kernel headers to avoid conflicts: yum remove kernel-headers kernel-tools kernel-tools-libsĪnd finally ask yum to install the new kernel packages: yum install kernel-ml kernel-ml-headers kernel-ml-tools kernel-ml-tools-libs kernel-ml-tools-libs-devel New kernels for CentOS are available via “ELRepo”.įirst, we download the GPG key of ELRepo and install the elrepo-release package. Install newer kernel on CentOSĪs the main repository of CentOS has no newer version of the kernel, we need first of all to use a 3rd party repository. So, I had to find a way to have newer kernels in my CentOS machines. For example, I was facing an issue with the rebalancing of a BTRFS partition spread among different disks, and I found a fix was made available in kernel 3.14. It’s good for production environments to use really stable and tested versions of the kernel, but I use a lot technologies like Ceph and BTRFS, and for those to work properly it’s recommended to use the latest possible kernels, as enhancements to those software is made available as kernel is updated. Note, I’ve not said “outdated”, if you look at the list 3.10 is there as “longterm”.

On a completely up-to-date CentOS 7 machine, the used kernel is quite older: ~]# uname -r Available Linux kernels as of November 2015

Centos latest stable version