Upgrade to an SMP kernel on new Woody install (help needed!)

[silentbob]

I have just finished my first Debian install on a server and have a question about upgrading to an SMP enabled kernel. The PC is a dual Athlon 2000 but the kernel installed is not SMP enabled, I went for the bf2.4 option to enable Reiserfs support.

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$ uname -a
Linux woody 2.4.18-bf2.4 #1 Son Apr 14 09:53:28 CEST 2002 i686 unknown

Looking through the list of available smp kernels in stable, there aren't any that are really appropriate for my system.

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$ apt-cache search 'kernel-image' | grep smp
kernel-image-2.4.16-686-smp - Linux kernel image 2.4.16 on PPro/Celeron/PII/PIII SMP.
kernel-image-2.4.18-686-smp - Linux kernel image 2.4.18 on PPro/Celeron/PII/PIII/PIV SMP.
kernel-image-2.4.18-1-686-smp - Linux kernel image 2.4.18 on PPro/Celeron/PII/PIII/PIV SMP.

I've had a look throught the "testing" packages and found a much better match kernel-image-2.4-k7-smp.

My question is how do I install this kernel using apt-get. I am completely new to Debian so I don't quite know how to have this one "testing" package installed on my system. My background in linux is from Gentoo where I would unmask / accept keywords ~x86 to use an unstable release of a package. What is the equivalent in the Debian world? I also have plenty of experience with compiling my own kernel under Gentoo, but as I said the Debian world is all strange and new to me

Cheers for any help.

[Wolven]

Hi there. Try looking in the APT HOWTO. How to keep a mixed system.
I haven't tried to mix packages my self yet. (I'm a Debian noob to.) But I hope the link can help you.

Edit: The link is a bit off... Scroll a bit up and you'll find the "3.8 How to keep a mixed system" section.

[silentbob]

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$ apt-get -t distribution install package

Fails because it can't find the package. I assume that I need to apt-get update to download a list of testing packages, but I'm struggling with that.

/etc/apt/sources.list

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deb ftp://www.mirror.ac.uk/sites/ftp.debian.org/debian/ stable main non-free contrib
deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US stable/non-US main contrib non-free
deb-src http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US stable/non-US main contrib non-free

deb http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main contrib non-free

# Added for testing packages
deb ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/ testing main non-free contrib

But doing an apt-get update fails...

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$ apt-get update
... <lines removed>
Hit ftp://ftp.debian.org testing/main Packages
Hit ftp://ftp.debian.org testing/main Release
Hit ftp://ftp.debian.org testing/non-free Packages
Hit ftp://ftp.debian.org testing/non-free Release
Hit ftp://ftp.debian.org testing/contrib Packages
Hit ftp://ftp.debian.org testing/contrib Release
Reading Package Lists... Error!
E: Dynamic MMap ran out of room
E: Error occured while processing php4-imagick (NewVersion1)
E: Problem with MergeList /var/lib/apt/lists/ftp.debian.org_debian_dists_testing_main_binary-i386_Packages
E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.

If I then try to apt-get the kernel it fails with a similar error.

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$ apt-get -t testing install kernel-image-2.4-smp
Reading Package Lists... Error!
E: Dynamic MMap ran out of room
E: Error occured while processing php4-imagick (NewVersion1)
E: Problem with MergeList /var/lib/apt/lists/ftp.debian.org_debian_dists_testing_main_binary-i386_Packages
E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.

[silentbob]

A google search of the error has turned up trumps:

/etc/apt/apt.conf

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APT::Default-Release "stable";
APT::Cache-Limit 141943904;

I'm now happily apt-getting kernel 2.4.27-1-k7-smp.

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apt-get -t testing install -s kernel-image-2.6-k7-smp