(note : reason is I'm using some applications that need recompilation of their specific modules per kernel which start to be cumbersome as kernel is often upgraded)
Though this isn't directly relevant to excluding the kernel packages from updating, I thought you might want to consider this as an alternative. You can make a simple script which will check if the specific module exists for the kernel (most are in /lib/modules/<kernel_version>/ or a sub-folder thereof) on every reboot. For example, I just upgraded from 2.6.17-1.2139_FC5 to 2.6.17-1.2145_FC5, my computer booted up ran a shell script the checked if the kernel module existed ( if [ -e "/lib/modules/`uname -r`/misc/ndiswrapper.ko" ]; then ...) and built it when the check failed. That way you can keep the kernel up-to-date and not worry about having to recompile everything with upgrades. Just my two cents. -m
