It was suggested to update my Debian Squeeze kernel to something more recent. We chose 2.6.38 and used Debian Backports to install linux-image-2.6.38-bpo.2-amd64 following these instructions summarized below.
nano /etc/apt/sources.list
Add the line below to the bottom of the file.
deb http://backports.debian.org/debian-backports squeeze-backports main
Update repositories
apt-get update
Install the backport and the kernel.
apt-get install -t squeeze-backports linux-image-2.6.38-bpo.2-amd64
Rebooted and voila! - system showing that is is running 2.6.38.
Now, a few days later, I do a
aptitude update
aptitude safe-upgrade
And get the following:
The following packages will be upgraded:
aptitude base-files ca-certificates grub-common libgssapi-krb5-2 libgssrpc4 libk5crypto3 libkadm5clnt-mit7
libkadm5srv-mit7 libkdb5-4 libkrb5-3 libkrb5support0 libpcap0.8 libssl0.9.8 linux-image-2.6.32-5-amd64
openssh-client openssh-server openssl tzdata usbutils
The following packages are RECOMMENDED but will NOT be installed:
apt-xapian-index aptitude-doc-cs aptitude-doc-en aptitude-doc-es aptitude-doc-fi aptitude-doc-fr
aptitude-doc-ja firmware-linux-free libparse-debianchangelog-perl
20 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 39.8 MB of archives. After unpacking 3,830 kB will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?]
Is aptitude is trying to go back to the old linux-image?
current sources.list is pretty standard:
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main
deb http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ squeeze-updates main
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ squeeze-updates main
deb http://packages.dotdeb.org stable all
deb http://backports.debian.org/debian-backports squeeze-backports main