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Here is my problem. My laptop has an NVidia Geforce 310 M graphic card. And since kernel 2.6 I had problems with the display. I had to use nomodeset option in the grub, if not my screen will be off when the xorg starts even though my computer is running.

Fortunately, this problem was fixed in early 3.0 kernels. It was fine until kernel 3.4.x in which the problem was back. So I've been using the old kernel(3.3.x) from my grub list, and reported a bug at bugzilla. But they never replied to my questions about the bug on bugzilla.

Now, the real problem is the update manager says there are software updates and it want to remove the old kernel and install some 3.4.x kernel which I'm not sure if they fixed the problem. If I don't get display, I lost my fedora I should re-install some other OS or OS with kernel 3.3.x

What should I do?

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How about creating a backup and then trying the new kernel? – scai Aug 9 '12 at 13:11

3 Answers

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I think this is a tricky question...There's no way we could recommend to update or not without being in same situation as you are right now.

@darnir made a good suggestion, my approach would be really close to it, upgrade but keep your old kernel close enough so you can always go back to it. Either downloading the RPM file or backing the kernel itself, its initramfs and its modules.

Also have look at how you could protect a package from being removed:

http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/14/html/Software_Management_Guide/ch04s08s07.html

Also...I was just wondering, which driver are you using? Open source (nouveau) or close source (Nvidia), have you tried both? maybe your bug is only hit on one of them.

I agree with @darnir, your bug report might be helpful.

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noeavu Nvdia's graphic driver never worked for me – pahnin Aug 11 '12 at 6:40
The link helped and I updated by by adding 3.3 kernel to pretected.conf and kernel 3.5 is working fine for me. Thanks – pahnin Aug 12 '12 at 20:34
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+100

If you want to keep your current kernel, I'd suggest installing the yum-plugin-versionlock package, and run yum versionlock kernel-$(uname -r) (while you're booted into the kernel you want to keep). This will tell yum to never replace that version of the kernel.

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I think this the best answer shu I go for it? I'm still not sure, will there be any problem with dependencies or somehing like that? – pahnin Aug 10 '12 at 14:17
Error: Package: kmod-VirtualBox-3.5.0-2.fc17.x86_64-4.1.18-1.fc17.3.x86_64 (rpmfusion-free-updates) Requires: kernel-uname-r = 3.5.0-2.fc17.x86_64 Installed: kernel-3.3.7-1.fc17.x86_64 (@updates) ................................................... .............................................. Available: kernel-debug-3.5.0-2.fc17.x86_64 (updates) kernel-uname-r = 3.5.0-2.fc17.x86_64.debug You could try using --skip-broken to work around the problem You could try running: rpm -Va --nofiles --nodigest – pahnin Aug 11 '12 at 6:32
@pahnin,you can also versionlock the kmods you have installed. – jsbillings Aug 13 '12 at 13:54
up vote 0 down vote

Try backing up the current kernel that you are using and make an entry for it in your grub.cfg before you upgrade to the latest one. If the kernel update does not solve your problem, you will always have your current kernel to fallback to.

However, I would suggest you to check online if the problem you are facing has been solved in the current version. You could check forums or the official kernel documentation for bug fixes.

Could you please link me to the bug report you filed for more information?

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