Upgrading Kernel on a Remote Server

[Manolis Kiagias]

Camilo Reyes wrote:
> I don't have much experience with this other than once I ran a server from home and remotely ssh'ed to it to do maintenance. One of the things I learned from that experience was that you can easily patch your services any time there is a new threat, all you have to do is patch your code, recompile, and restart service. If you are not sure it will ever come back up when you restart, you can leave it patched and restart it when you are more comfortable. When it comes to the kernel, don't upgrade it unless it's ABSOLUTELY necessary because you have to reboot each time; unless of course, some genius out there has figured out a way to do it without a reboot.
>
> Just my two cents,
>
> Camilo
> "Bono Vince Malum"
>
>   
>
A nice trick for easily recovering from unbootable kernels is 
nextboot(8). Try man nextboot