CentOS 5 experiences, Just wanting to post this, in case it helps others. Options

[billmarrs]

I'm a new The Planet customer. I'm just setting up the servers I ordered this week.

They were both running CentOS 4, but I had support upgrade them to CentOS 5. This was done very quickly and I was happy about that.

So, I've been working with CentOS 5 a little now. Here are a few things I noticed or had to deal with:

o I ran "yum update" and there were about 150 things that needed upgrading. So, be sure to do this soon after you start using CentOS 5.

o Updating the kernel and rebooting didn't actually change which kernel was running. It turned out that /etc/grub.conf is not linked to /boot/grub/grub.conf as is usual, but is a standalone file. So, this prevents kernel upgrades from actually getting used after a reboot.

-- I fixed this by moving /etc/grub.conf to /etc/grub.conf.orig, then putting the sym-link back where it belongs, "cd /etc; ln -s ../boot/grub/grub.con". Also, since /etc/grub.conf.orig actually contained some useful edits for remote console usage, additions like:
serial --unit=0 --speed=9600 -word=8 --parity=no --stop=1
terminal --timeout=2 serial console
and " console=tty0 console=ttyS0,9600n8" added on the kernel line. I copied these edits over to the /boot/grub/grub.conf file as well.

o Finally, while my server has 4GB of memory in it, CentOS 5 was only showing that I had about 3.5 (via top or free). I did some web searches and it turns out that you need use the kernel-PAE package to get all 4GB of ram recognized. So, do a "yum install kernel-PAE". Then, make sure you do the above step and reboot.

That's all for now. I hope this helps others.

[markcausa]

Thank you for sharing. I'm sure it will come in handy to someone in the future.