5. Kernel Location

Lesson Content

What happens when you install a new kernel? Well it actually adds a couple of files to your system, these files are usually added to the /boot directory.

You will see multiple files for different kernel versions:

• vmlinuz - this is the actual linux kernel
• initrd - as we’ve discussed before, the initrd is used as a temporary file system, used before loading the kernel
• System.map - symbolic lookup table
• config - kernel configuration settings, if you are compiling your own kernel, you can set which modules can be loaded

If your /boot directory runs out of space, you can always delete old versions of these files or just use a package manager, but be careful when doing maintenance in this directory and don’t accidentally delete the kernel you are using.

Exercise

Go into your boot directory and see what files are in there.

Quiz Question