Is it safe to keep /kernel.old?

[Dick Davies]

* Mark <admin at asarian-host.net> [0719 11:19]:
> Dear people,
> 
> I have been applying patches over time; and when I recompile the kernel (4.9R p4), it keeps the old one around. My question is, though, is it safe to keep /kernel.old? I always keep it around, in case the new kernel has a problem. And that always seemed like a sensible policy to me. But what if one of the patches contains an exploitable bug? I run in securelevel 2, so I am not sure whether users could actually use the old kernel (once in multi-user mode). Still, I wonder if this concern is valid at all. Or whether I should perhaps get rid of the old kernel.

What I generally do on all BSds is when I've been using the kernel happily for a week or two,
I 'cp /kernel /kernel.ok' - if you let /kernel.old get *too* old, you might find it won't boot
on a recent userland....

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