Is it stable enough to use ELRepo’s kernel-ml (e.g., v7.2.2) on the latest version of Rocky Linux?
I plan to use this server solely for NGINX.
The way mainline is explained is that it’s generally reliable and well-tested, but not considered stable for long-term production use. I expect you probably won’t experience any problems with it though. Whether you are running NGINX or something else.
Probably your best bet if you want truly stable is to use something like kernel-lt, although from checking that seems to not be available on Rocky10 right now. On Rocky9 and lower it exists.
Why do you feel you need kernel-ml? I would only install kernel-ml or kernel-lt if there was something in that kernel that I needed. For example, due to lack of hardware support from the official Rocky/RHEL kernel.
For a simple NGINX server, kernel-ml may work perfectly fine, but I’d still be cautious calling it “production stable” in the Rocky/RHEL sense. Rocky’s default kernel is what gets the distro testing, ABI stability expectations, and vendor/security errata flow. ELRepo’s kernel-ml tracks the mainline kernel much more closely, which is useful for newer hardware or specific kernel features, but it also means more change.
If you don’t specifically need kernel-ml, I’d stick with Rocky’s stock kernel for production NGINX. If you do need it, test your exact workload first, keep the previous known-good kernel installed, and make sure your reboot/rollback path is clear before putting it in front of real traffic.