RFC: kernel-modules in Fedora Extras

[Thorsten Leemhuis]

Am Mittwoch, den 11.01.2006, 13:59 -0500 schrieb Jack Neely: 
> > The newer userland-package probably won't work with the old
> > kernel-version anyway. But the question is correct: how do we solve
> > this? IMHO the plugin should uninstall older kernel-modules. Or should a
> > package "kmod-foo-1.2-1.2.6.14-1.1776_FC4" simply have a 
> > Obsolets: kmod-foo < 1.2
> > Would yum in this case uninstall the older versions during update
> > (normally kmod-packages are installed and not updated, but in this case
> > we want it to update)? 

> In practice I have the kernel module require the userland package but
> not a specific version.
> 
>     Requires: openafs
>
> The justification is that there will not be multiple copies of the
> userland tools installed and that package will require the kmod of a
> specific version:
> 
>     Requires: kmod-openafs = 1.4.0

Okay. Welcome to our Theater. Main actor: User foo.

Scene 1: User foo steps up. He has only limited bandwidth and therefor only
once a month runs a full "yum update". He uses openafs. One week after
he ran "yum update" he runs

# yum update kernel kmod-openafs

to get the shiny new kernel 2.6.15 that was released and the
kernel-module he needs (Fixme: the yum-plugin should take care of the
later). But openafs was also updated in between, but due to the
    Requires: openafs 
in it he doesn't get the new openafs userland package. User foo restarts
to the new kernel and openafs won't work, because the older openafs
userland package doesn't work with the new version of the kmod.

User foo looks frustrated and begins to debug [...]

End of scene 1. 

Don't know if the part "openafs won't work, because the older openafs
userland package doesn't work with the new version of the kmod" is true
for openafs, but it is for a lot of kernel-modules I know. So no, this
doesn't work afaics.

CU
thl