Question: Linux kernel releases and Fedora kernel RPMs...

[Dave Jones]

On Thu, 2004-04-15 at 00:23, Michael A. Peters wrote:
> On Wed, 2004-04-14 at 16:13, Michael A. Peters wrote:
> 
> > 
> > > 2. The O_DIRECT patch/hack that allows rpm (actually, the underlying
> > >   Berkeley DB) to work correctly.
> > 
> > That's scary - a kernel patch needed for a user space library to work
> > properly? I'll have to look that one up and see what that's about - but
> > I initially don't like the sound of that.
> 
> OK - O_DIRECT looks like a performance tune more than anything, and
> isn't _necessary_ so to speak.
> 
> I was running vanilla rpm 4.3 on an LFS system with BerkeleyDB 3.x
> (whatever the stable 3 was) and has no issues - so I suspect the
> O_DIRECT patch wouldn't have been a necessity to have. But not having
> run RH9/FC1 I can't say for sure. Just that other systems with rpm and
> BDB 3 and 4 and rpm ran fine w/o the patch - so unless RH/Fedora messed
> up BDB then that wouldn't have been an issue.

The RHL9/FC1 kernels disabled O_DIRECT. If bdb tries to use it,
bad things can happen as it doesn't take into consideration the
alignment rules necessary when using O_DIRECT.  I think this actually
got fixed in later versions of bdb, but I don't know if those fixes
made it into the RHL9/FC1 versions of bdb.

	Dave