No more kernel-source(code) ??? (was: rawhide report: 20040623 changes)

Thorsten Leemhuis fedora at leemhuis.info
Thu Jun 24 17:43:47 UTC 2004


Am Do, den 24.06.2004 schrieb Jeremy Katz um 16:59:
> On Thu, 2004-06-24 at 10:29 -0400, Jack Neely wrote:
> > On Wed, Jun 23, 2004 at 09:43:54PM -0400, Jeremy Katz wrote:
> > > On Thu, 2004-06-24 at 02:14 +0200, Axel Thimm wrote:
> > > > In theory, yes, but try to build a kernel module for i686 on an athlon
> > > > box. The kernel sources will clash with the running kernel.
> > > 
> > > I'd rather fix this problem than paper over it with the kernel source.
> > > Especially since to really do things with the kernel source right now,
> > > you have to make changes to the tree in /usr/src.
> > > 
> > 
> > Really, this is the main issue at stake.  Us packagers have been
> > building packages of kernel modules for years on 2.4.  There is a
> > defined way to use the installed kernel-headers to create modules that
> > work with 1586, 1686, athlon, and the SMP variations thereon.
> > 
> > Now we have 2.6 and the same thing doesn't work and there's lots of
> > confusion about how to build external kernel modules.  I know I'm
> > confused.
> 
> Bingo.  The current situation, though, is far better for a single user
> who wants to build a kernel module.

I thought it worked fine in most situations before. But I also think the
basic approach is better now.

>  It loses some for packagers.

Yes. Really.

> Coming up with a solution that makes things easy for the user who just
> wants to build a module for their running kernel _and_ the person trying
> to package modules for a larger audience will be a big win.  

++

> > FC2 has an i586 and i686 kernel packages.  The 2.6 kernel is smart
> > enough to do the athlon optimizations on the fly, so that's one less
> > arch to build for.  SMP modules appear to be identical to non-SMP.
> > (From what I've gathered...not sure if there should be a difference
> > there or not.)  How do you build for the i586?  I'm not going to remove
> > my running kernel to install the i586 arch.  
> 
> SMP modules are different from the non-SMP ones, but that's not a
> problem as you can install kernel-smp in parallel with your main kernel
> package.  The i586 vs i686 part is the hard one.

Why can't they also contain the arch-part (i586, i686) like they contain
the smp-tag. So they were installable all in parallel. With Suse that is
possible. I like that very much. 

And please don't answer "Yes, but that's ugly to look at :-)" ;-)

Yes, I know, for most people this in unimportant. And changing machines
i686 and i586 happens not that often. That happened much more often when
there was a special athlon kernel...

> Personally, I think that having a kernel-devel package that puts the
> headers somewhere with both the `uname -r` and arch as part of the path
> would be useful.  That ends up working very nicely for people doing
> packaging.  Unfortunately, it goes back to making things more difficult
> for an end-user.  The best thing I've come up with at present for that
> is to continue to do like is being done now (headers for the current
> kernel in /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/build) and have kernel-devel be in
> addition to that.  It would be a little bit higher disk space usage, but
> as kernel-headers would only need to be installed for special cases, I'm
> not sure that's a huge concern.  Actually, I guess that /lib/modules/
> $(uname -r)/build could be a symlink to /usr/include/kernel-headers/
> $(uname -r)/$arch and be included as a broken symlink in the package.
> That _might_ work for keeping both camps happy.

I would really like a solution like that. In fedora.us there ist a
package in the QA queue with contains the files from
/lib/modules/$(uname -r)/build of all different kernels in /usr/src/.
See

http://bugzilla.fedora.us/show_bug.cgi?id=1709

> That's just my thinking out loud, though...  I'm sure other people have
> ideas as well.

BTW: IMHO we should also consider if we use the approach (at hole or in
parts) that the kernel-developers are working on. See 

http://www.uwsg.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0406.2/1280.html

Arjan also commented in the thread but was not that enthusiastic
AFAICS... But I don't what to end in a situation where building external
modules is different then the kernel documentation suggest. Or different
from all other distributions...

Just my 2¢

CU
thl





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