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I performed a distro upgrade via apt-get and upgrade-tool from saucy 13.10 to trusty 14.04. It seemed to go OK and the "about" now tells me I am running 14.04, however uname -a says I am running kernel 3.11.0-18-generic. Was the upgrade successful? I had expected the kernel to change to 13.13, and in fact it looks like the headers in /usr/src are for 13.3.

The machine works OK, however I'm trying to install a new ATI graphics driver and it fails due to incorrect kernel headers (it wants the headers for 3.11.0-18). I have tried to install the 3.11.0-18 headers but apt seems not to be able to find them.

Any help appreciated.

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2 Answers 2

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Yes, upgrading installs a new kernel. However, it seems as though the old kernel is still installed (the currently running kernel won't be automatically removed on upgrade), and for some reason you are still running it. Did you do a full reboot? Is the old kernel set as the default in grub? You can reboot, select the new kernel at the grub menu, remove all the old kernels, and the install the new graphics driver.

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  • yes, the machine has had many full reboots since the upgrade. grub is only showing the old kernel, so I'm now thinking the new kernel binaries were not installed at all, which seems weird since the headers are there.
    – Mudhoney
    Nov 19, 2014 at 5:08
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I know the issue, but I'm not sure the reasoning. First the reasoning, I think the upgrade process will not automatically install the latest generic kernel, since Ubuntu is designed to run on multiple kinds of devices, which require different kernels.

Kernel upgrades are handled by having the proper kernel meta package installed. It might be that somehow that package got uninstalled.

For a typical desktop, which is one running x86 architecture, here is the fix: sudo apt-get install linux-generic That will install the latest kernel and associated header files, which should set you up proper to install your graphics driver.

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  • Thankyou, that worked perfectly. New graphics driver installed without issue.
    – Mudhoney
    Nov 19, 2014 at 5:46

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