Home / server / Questions / 364277
Accepted
Dominic Cronin
Asked: 2012-02-28 14:23:42 +0800 CST

How can I tell which of two very similar linux kernels I booted from?

  • 772

I have recently compiled a new kernel for my linux server. It is almost identical with the previous kernel (I added cifs support). Because physical access to the server is limited, I configured grub to fallback to the old kernel if the new kernel failed to boot cleanly. I can now boot the server, but I don't know which kernel is running.

I tried doing "uname -a" and it gives me the kernel name followed by #2. Is the #2 relevant to my problem?

How can I find out which of the two possible kernels is running? Ideally I'd like to relate it to the order listed in my grub.conf

linux grub

3 Answers

  1. $ ls /proc/fs

    ...should show cifs if you're on the new kernel.

    • 4
  2. Best Answer

    You can "tag" your kernel to identify it later on.
    In menuconfig, go to "General Setup" -> "Local version - append to kernel release"
    Any string you enter there will be displayed by uname as suffix to your kernel version.

    • 3

  3. Another answer to this is cat /proc/cmdline

    This shows the path to the kernel and any command line parameters that were used.

    example.

    cat /proc/cmdline

    BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-17-generic root=UUID=b33290c0-553a-4fd1-af00-b82017923b88 ro ipv6.disable=1 splash quiet vt.handoff=7

    • 1