What is it? kexec-chooser is a small utility that makes warm rebooting into new kernels under Debian a bit easier. What is warm rebooting? Recent Linux kernels support a new feature called kexec. Basically it allows you to load a new kernel image into memory, and then boot into that kernel directory without having to do a full reboot of the machine. This can speed up reboots significantly. Where do I get it? Download it here:

• kexec-chooser_0.1.tar.gz
• kexec-chooser_0.1_all.deb

You'll also need Python version 2.4 installed, as well as the kexec-tools package. How do I install it? If you downloaded the .deb version, then running dpkg -i kexec-chooser_0.1_all.deb should work. If you downloaded the .tar.gz version, then your best bet is to copy kexec-chooser into /usr/sbin. This package is really designed to work on Debian, so your milage may vary on other distributions. How do I use it?

kexec -l

will print a list of available kernels.

kexec 2.6.17

will indicate that you want to warm-reboot into the 2.6.17 kernel. Note that this won't actually reboot your machine. When you reboot via the reboot command, or GNOME's Shut Down/Reboot dialog, then kexec-chooser will warm-reboot into the kernel you specified. See the man page for more information.