Description of problem: Yum will remove installed kernels even when the installonly options in yum.conf are not set. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): yum-3.2.2-1.fc7 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Use default yum.conf with no installonly options specified 2. Run an update which contains a kernel Actual results: ============================================================================= Package Arch Version Repository Size ============================================================================= Installing: kernel i686 2.6.22.2-57.fc7 updates-testing 16 M Updating: kernel-headers i386 2.6.22.2-57.fc7 updates-testing 657 k Removing: kernel i686 2.6.22.1-33.fc7 installed 46 M Transaction Summary ============================================================================= Note that the old kernel is scheduled for removal. Expected results: New kernel is installed, old kernel is kept. Additional info: The yum.conf man page says: installonly_limit Number of packages listed in installonlypkgs to keep installed at the same time. Setting to 0 disables this feature. Default is ’0’. My yum.conf doesn't contain an installonly_limit line an so should default to 0 which should disable the feature, ie all kernels should be kept.
If I explicitly set installonly_limit=0 in /etc/yum.conf then I get the expected behaviour (old kernels are not removed), so it looks like yum is just not setting the documented default when no value is specified.
Yes, it's a documentation error in the release for fedora. I added a patch to the fedora release to enable instalonly_limit=2 by default. I neglected to add the change to the docs. The docs change is in place now in cvs but it hasn't been pushed to a live package.