The Kernel Administration Guide describes working with the kernel and shows several practical tasks. Beginning with information on using kernel modules, the guide then covers interaction with the sysfs facility, manual upgrade of the kernel and using kpatch. The guide also introduces the crash dump mechanism, which steps through the process of setting up and testing vmcore collection in the event of a kernel failure.

The Kernel Administration Guide also covers selected use cases of managing the kernel and includes reference material about command line options, kernel tunables (also known as switches), and a brief discussion of kernel features.