Question

How to check if kernel is properly updated/patched?

I have received an email from Digital Ocean to update the OS to mitigate the industry-wide security vulnerabilities known as Meltdown and Spectre

Quote from email: To simplify the act of patching, we have recently updated Droplets to utilize a GrubLoader. On certain legacy Droplets, this may cause issues if the kernel is not upgraded.

This is the link that I am referred to about the upgrade: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-protect-your-server-against-the-meltdown-and-spectre-vulnerabilities

I am running CentOS 6, I have executed the following

yum update
yum update kernel

When I do uname -r I still get:

2.6.32-504.12.2.el6.x86_64

But when I do yum install kernel I get:

Package kernel-2.6.32-696.20.1.el6.x86_64 already installed and latest version

Does that mean the kernel is not updated accordingly?

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mingpebblar • January 31, 2018
Accepted Answer

I have just realised I need to update the kernel from DO dashboard where for CentOS6 I need to select GrubLoader v0.1, after power off, and once the machine is rebooted, I have noticed the kernel is using the latest installed version

mingpebblar • January 31, 2018

This comment has been deleted

loginbiz • January 29, 2018

Same error here… Seens like the grub still using the old version…

PeterS • January 29, 2018

I don’t know CentOS very well, but shouldn’t the droplet be restarted after a kernel update?