The following note is based on Debian Kernel Building Mini-HOWTO. It is intended to be a quick and dirty guide to upgrade your kernel packages for Debian. For more information, please refer to /usr/share/doc/kernel-package/README and /usr/share/doc/grub/README.Debian

1. Check you have the packages "kernel-package" installed

2. Get a Linux kernel you want to upgrade to, either from kernel.org or from a Debian package

3. Uncompress the tarball to /usr/src

4. Enter the kernel source directory

5. Configure your kernel 'make menuconfig'. Note that for menuconfig you may need "libc6-dev" and "libncurses5-dev"

6. Execute this command: 'make-kpkg kernel_image'

7. You will have a kernel deb in the parent directory of your kernel source now. Install it using dpkg 'dpkg -i file.deb'

8. Generate initrd.img-{version}: 'mkinitrd -k -o /boot/initrd.img-{version} {version}'. You may need to install "initrd-tools"

Finally, if you use grub, you need to get your /boot/grub/menu.lst updated. Usually, it will be automatically updated if you have the file /etc/kernel-img.conf with the following lines:

	postinst_hook = /sbin/update-grub
	postrm_hook = /sbin/update-grub
	do_bootloader = no

This will ensure update-grub is ran upon installation of any kernel packages, self-created or Debian-created.