DKMS usage (was: rawhide report: 20050310 changes)

[Matt Domsch]

On Sat, Mar 12, 2005 at 07:30:13AM +0100, Dag Wieers wrote:
> On Fri, 11 Mar 2005, Matt Domsch wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, Mar 11, 2005 at 11:18:56AM -0600, Jason L Tibbitts III wrote:
> > > I guess the question is whether DKMS can be so modified and if so
> > > whether the result would be better than whatever other solutions
> > > people have come up with.
> > 
> > # dkms build -m foo -v version -k some_kernel_version -a some_arch
> > # (repeat for different -k -a values)
> 
> And how does this work with the 2.6 kernel ? Is it capable to build for 
> different architectures from the same sources without the need of touching 
> them ?
> 
> I thought that was the main problem nowadays with 2.6, building the kernel 
> modules as user for different archs without having to copy parts or the 
> whole kernel tree.
> 
> If it can do that, I may have to integrate dkms into my buildsystem :)

Yes, it can.  It uses the headers/Makefile left in
/lib/modules/${kernelversion}/build/ from the kernel RPM.  (That is,
<= FC3, as I see FC4-rawhide will require kernel-devel packages be
installed on the build system, no real big suprise there though).

The multiple-architecture thing gets a little tricky, I have to
admit.  /lib/modules/`uname -r`/ doesn't take in having multiple
architectures on the file system.  But that's OK, DKMS can be passed 
--kernelsourcedir=source-location  and
--config=kernel-.config-location to override its default attempts of
/lib/modules/${kernelversion}, so you just unpack the other-arch RPMs
into a new /path/to/${arch}/lib/modules/${kernelversion}  and point
DKMS at it.

Thanks,
Matt

-- 
Matt Domsch
Software Architect
Dell Linux Solutions linux.dell.com & www.dell.com/linux
Linux on Dell mailing lists @ http://lists.us.dell.com