[dm-devel] Re: installing DM on RHES3 on x86_64

[Sebastien Boving]

On Tue, 15 Jun 2004, Brian wrote:

> I've done it before (on an i686 RHEL3 with a base 2.4.21EL-smp kernel).  It's
> not a pure 2.4.21 kernel by any means; it contains a lot of items that have been
> backported from the 2.6 kernel (some of which is a part of device-mapper).  You
> can't really apply the patches out of the box.  It can be made to work but you
> basically have to apply all the patches manually -- look at the individual files
> being modified/added from the 2.4.21 devmapper patch (and better yet, look at
> the files in the patches/common directory) and determine which changes have
> already been backported by RedHat and which haven't.

thanks, i was starting on that yesterday and it looked like it would take
a long time, so i'm happy at least i know that's the way to go (and i
don't learn after hours of work there was an easier fix).


> There are some manual modifications you'll have to make as well -- check
> the archives of this list for a few additional patches I posted a couple
> of months ago, or else figure them out yourself from the compile errors.
> :)  If you're planning on installing EVMS you'll have to do even more
> tweaking to get those patches to work as well, but with enough effort it
> *is* possible to get the kernel to compile and the tools to work
> properly (as best I can tell, although I gave up on EVMS and decided to
> stick with LVM2 instead).

interesting.  It seems from the docs that EVMS has more cluster support,
which is what i'm currently looking for (even though i know CLVM will
follow the dev of LVM2).

> Finally, note that patching your kernel in this way to use the latest
> device-mapper (and LVM2 or EVMS) source voids any service contract you may have
> with RedHat, which basically means they're not obligated to help you if you run
> into trouble (although I'm sure the dm-devel list will do the best they can).

that would be showstopper.  I opened a ticket with them to check, if this
is true i probably won't go there (unless for taking a look) as, once in
production, we'll need to keep these systems in support.  In case i hear
otherwise i'll advise the group so you know.  I'll also check SuSE (you
can compile dm-mod in their kernel, but the dmsetup from latest dm package
doesn't seem to recognize it).


thanks for the useful info!
-seb.