Update Centos Kernel 3.10 to 5.13 latest.

In this tutorial, I will show you how to upgrade the CentOS 7 kernel to the latest version. We will use a precompiled kernel from the ELRepo repository. By default CentOS 7 uses kernel 3.10. In this manual, we will install the latest stable kernel version 5.0.11.

What we will do:

1. Update and Upgrade CentOS 7
2. Checking the Kernel Version
3. Add ELRepo Repository
4. Install New Kernel Version
5. Configure Grub2

Step 1 — Update and Upgrade CentOS 7 and install the plugin

#yum -y update
#yum -y install yum-plugin-fastestmirror

Step 2 — Checking the Kernel Version

We will use CentOS 7.6 with default kernel 3.10. Check your CentOS version with commands below.

#cat /etc/redhat-release
#cat /etc/os-release
#uname -snr

Step 3 — Add ELRepo Repository

Before installing the new kernel version, we need to add a new repository — the ELRepo repository.

Add ELRepo gpg key to the system.

#rpm --import https://www.elrepo.org/RPM-GPG-KEY-elrepo.org
#rpm -Uvh https://www.elrepo.org/elrepo-release-7.0-3.el7.elrepo.noarch.rpm

When it’s complete, check all repository enabled on the system, and make sure ELRepo is on the list.

#yum repolist

Step 4 — Install New CentOS Kernel Version

In this step, we will install a new latest kernel from ELRepo repository, kernel version 5.0.11 — the Latest stable version on kernel.org.

Install the ELRepo kernel version with the yum command below.

#yum --enablerepo=elrepo-kernel install kernel-ml

Step 5 — Configure Grub2 on CentOS 7

At step 4, we’ve already installed a new kernel 5.0.11 to the system. Now, I will show you how to configure the default kernel version to load when the system is starting.

Check all available kernel versions in the Grub2 with awk command below.

#awk -F\' '$1=="menuentry " {print i++ " : " $2}' /etc/grub2.cfg

You see that we have two kernel versions — 3.10 and 5.0.11.

Now we want to configure the default kernel that will run when the system is starting. We will use kernel 5.0 as our default, so you can use the command below to set it up.

#sudo grub2-set-default 0

0 — it’s from the awk command on the top. Kernel 5.0.11 = 0, and Kernel 3.10 = 1. When you want to back to the old kernel, you can change the value of the grub2-set-default command to 1.

Next, generate the grub2 config with ‘gurb2-mkconfig’ command, then reboot the server.

#sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
#sudo reboot

Login to the server again, and check currently kernel version.

uname -snr

DONE….!!!