How To Upgrade The Linux Kernel In CentOS 7

Introduction

This guide's purpose is purely informational, and as such, cPanel, LLC will not assume responsibility for any potential adverse outcomes that might arise from its adoption. You may, therefore, wish to seek assistance from a qualified system administrator in case you require further assistance with upgrading the kernel on your system.

On a CentOS system, the yum package manager allows kernel updates. However, CentOS does not offer the latest kernel versions in the official repository. Many Linux distributions, CentOS included,  provide their own long-term maintenance kernels that may or may not be based on those maintained by kernel developers. This article offers guidance on how you can review and update your kernel.

Procedure

Before you can update the kernel on CentOS, you must first enable the ELRepo Repository, which provides the latest versions. Then you can review the available updates and compare them to your current Kernel to determine which package you wish to install.

How to enable the ELRepo repository

How to identify the active Kernel on your server

How to review the Kernels available from the ELRepo repository

Once you have decided on the package to update to, you can proceed with the following steps.

1. Before upgrading the kernel, we advise that you update all CentOS packages to the latest version.
   

   yum -y update

2. You can now install the new CentOS Kernel version. You can either specify a package with the version or just the latest stable(lt) or mainline(ml) versions.
   To install the latest mainline version:
   

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

   To install the latest stable version:
   

   yum --enablerepo=elrepo-kernel install kernel-lt -y

   Please note that the new Kernel should be configured to be the default during boot automatically. If this is not the case, you may need to set this manually. 
   How to configure the boot Kernel for CentOS 7

3. Finally, you will need to reboot the server to load in the new Kernel.

   reboot

Additional Resources

Does the kernel update automatically?