I have an quad-processor amd64 (12GB RAM) system happily running on a kernel 
that announces itself as 2.0.2_STABLE. I'd like to add a (multilane) PCI SATA 
controller to this (recommendations welcome - I don't care if it emulates an IDE 
interface, as long as it works).

The machine is very stable at what it's currently doing.

I'm concerned that I will have to upgrade the kernel to support the PCI card and 
the intended new work (mysqld), and have no idea how to do an upgrade in place.

Is there a FAQ/howto somewhere? What's the best stable kernel at the moment?

Thanks,
chris