Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3: System Administration Guide
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# 39.4. Performing the Upgrade

After retrieving all the necessary packages, it is time to upgrade the existing kernel. At a shell prompt as root, change to the directory that contains the kernel RPM packages and follow these steps.

| Important
| It is strongly recommended that the old kernel is kept in case there are problems with the new kernel.

Use the `-i` argument with the `rpm` command to keep the old kernel. If the `-U` option is used to upgrade the `kernel` package, it will overwrite the currently installed kernel. (the kernel version may vary):

    rpm -ivh kernel-2.4.21-1.1931.2.399.ent.<arch>.rpm

If the system is a multi-processor system, install the `kernel-smp` packages as well (the kernel version may vary):

    rpm -ivh kernel-smp-2.4.21-1.1931.2.399.ent.<arch>.rpm

If the system is `i686`-based and contains more than 4 gigabytes of RAM, install the `kernel-hugemem` package built for the `i686` architecture as well (the kernel version might vary):

    rpm -ivh kernel-hugemem-2.4.21-1.1931.2.399.ent.i686.rpm

If the `kernel-source` or `kernel-utils` packages are to be upgraded, the older versions are probably not needed. Use the following commands to upgrade these packages (the versions might vary):

    rpm -Uvh kernel-source-2.4.21-1.1931.2.399.ent.<arch>.rpm
    rpm -Uvh kernel-utils-2.4.21-1.1931.2.399.ent.<arch>.rpm

The next step is to verify that the initial RAM disk image has been created. Refer to Section 39.5 Verifying the Initial RAM Disk Image for details.

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