

Ask HN: Why doesn't DigitalOcean support custom kernels? - dancingspider

They appear to be skipping the OS&#x27;s bootloader and instead starting the VPS off of an external kernel image.  The only problem is that their kernel versions are way out of date which can be a security issue.<p>I&#x27;m wondering if there is any technical reason why you would want to limit the kernel a customer ran?<p>Relevant:<p>- https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.digitalocean.com&#x2F;community&#x2F;questions&#x2F;do-you-update-kernels-sometimes<p>- http:&#x2F;&#x2F;digitalocean.uservoice.com&#x2F;forums&#x2F;136585-digital-ocean&#x2F;suggestions&#x2F;2814988-give-option-to-use-the-droplet-s-own-bootloader-
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jeff_carr
We intend on adding this soon. It's a difficult engineering issue. For now,
just open a ticket if we don't have the newest kernel in the drop down menu of
available kernels.

\-- Jeff Carr Chief Architect Digital Ocean Inc.

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smartwater
The etiquette is to not individually sign posts. There is a spot in your
profile for that kind of information.

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jstanley
It reduces your exposure to potential hypervisor bugs. Apart from that, it is
also a little easier to setup this way, and also there is no need to support
whatever esoteric kernel setup the customer might be running.

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iends
Yeah, like kernel with grsecurity patches :(

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madmaze
Have you asked the Ops on IRC? #digitalocean on irc.freenode.net?

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rdnck76
I don't think this is KVM's default setting.

