I want to use the old repository on Amazon Linux

This is Sashihara from the System Solutions Department

These are notes from when I installed a slightly older version of the kernel on an Amazon Linux instance on AWS EC2 for verification purposes

overview

OS : Amazon Linux AMI release 2016.09

Old kernel : kernel-4.4.35-33.55.amzn1.x86_64

The kernel I want to install : kernel-4.4.51-40.67.amzn1.x86_64

Problems

I thought I could install it by specifying the version with yum install, but it didn't work

[root@ip-xx-xx-xx-xx ~]# yum install kernel-4.4.51-40.67.amzn1.x86_64 Loaded plugins: priorities, update-motd, upgrade-helper No package kernel-4.4.51-40.67.amzn1.x86_64 available. Error: Nothing to do

The reason is that the latest version was referenced from Amazon's repository, and the relevant package did not exist

By the way, as of August 2, 2017, the latest kernel is 4.9.38-16.33.amzn1.x86_64

How to respond

The yum settings have a setting called releasever, which determines the repository to reference

By default it is set to latest, so change that

[root@ip-xx-xx-xx-xx ~]# vim /etc/yum.conf releasever=latest ↓ releasever=2016.09

 

Then run the yum command that failed earlier

[root@ip-xx-xx-xx-xx ~]# yum install kernel-4.4.51-40.67.amzn1.x86_64 . . Installed: kernel.x86_64 0:4.4.51-40.67.amzn1 Complete!

 

After restarting the server, check the kernel information

[root@ip-xx-xx-xx-xx ~]# uname -r 4.4.51-40.67.amzn1.x86_64

 

The specified kernel was installed without any problems

The above method is also described in the AWS documentation

* Comment out the corresponding lines for the listed actions

This gives you the flexibility to install older versions if you want

That's all