[lobster_johnson]

Digital Ocean hasn't required that you change the kernel through the UI for some time now. Are you sure that's necessary?

[jsamuel]

It's only necessary for older servers (e.g. Ubuntu 12.04 and 14.04) where people haven't done this already.

[vdloo]

you can also use the API for this https://developers.digitalocean.com/documentation/v2/#change...

for example for precise the kernel ID is 7515 for the "DigitalOcean GrubLoader v0.2 (20160714) Ubuntu" kernel. If you do this be sure to double-check the id by listing the kernels using the API though. You can also do this with libcloud using 'ex_change_kernel' from the 'DigitalOcean_v2_NodeDriver'