Upgrading CentOS kernel to the latest version

Step-by-step guide

Step #1. Update the installed packages and install the fastestmirror package

(needed to select the most available repository for installation at the time)

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

Step #2. Import the public key of the ELRepo repository and install this repository

rpm --import https://www.elrepo.org/RPM-GPG...
rpm -Uvh https://www.elrepo.org/elrepo-...

Step #3. Clear the yum cache before installing

yum clean all

Step #4. Install thekernel-ml package from the installed repository

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

Step #5. Check the version of the installed kernel in the OS loader

To do this, you can use the following command:

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

The output will look like this

# sudo awk -F\' '$1=="menuentry " {print i++ " : " $2}' /etc/grub2.cfg
0 : CentOS Linux (5.3.8-1.el7.elrepo.x86_64) 7 (Core)
1 : CentOS Linux (3.10.0-1062.4.1.el7.x86_64) 7 (Core)
2 : CentOS Linux (3.10.0-957.el7.x86_64) 7 (Core)
3 : CentOS Linux (0-rescue-14dc8360d3c94457b2b096d6da6b8737) 7 (Core

As you can see the latest version of the kernel is marked as option 0. We set this option as the default option for the bootloader and regenerate its configuration.

grub2-set-default 0
grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

After that, we reboot the system and after loading we check the installed kernel version

# uname -msr
Linux 5.3.8-1.el7.elrepo.x86_64 x86_64

As you can see, the system booted with the correct kernel version. After that, you can uninstall older versions

yum install yum-utils
package-cleanup --oldkernels