Two questions about FC1 kernel upgrades

[Dag Wieers]

On Wed, 14 Jan 2004, Panu Matilainen wrote:

> On Wed, 14 Jan 2004, Dag Wieers wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, 13 Jan 2004, Daniel Robitaille wrote:
> > 
> > > 1) Since I installed FC1 just before Christmas, I have had to do 4
> > > kernel upgrades in 3 weeks.  Is that an anomalous period, or it's
> > > always going to be like that in the Fedora world?  I don't remember so many
> > > kernel updates in a short time like this with RHL8/9. Or I'm getting
> > > what I'm paying for? :)
> > > 
> > >  Dec 24 14:48 vmlinux-2.4.22-1.2135.nptl 
> > >  Jan  6 17:50 vmlinux-2.4.22-1.2138.nptl
> > >  Jan  7 23:19 vmlinux-2.4.22-1.2140.nptl
> > >  Jan 13 20:40 vmlinux-2.4.22-1.2149.nptl
> > 
> > Also a huge pain for kernel-module packagers. For each kernel release I'm 
> > doing about 14 packages for 4 archs and 4 distributions, for smp and up.
> > 
> > That's about 448 kernel-module packages for each new kernel. It takes 
> > more than 24 hours to do ;(
> 
> Ouch...
> 
> Since this came up, while more a -devel topic, packaging kernel modules 
> into rpm's the way all the 3rd party repos are doing now is really a road 
> to madness. Not only because the endless rebuild requirement but also end 
> user transparency.. the current methods of upgrading those packages are by 
> no means perfect :(

Yes, I yesterday told someone to install some kernel-module for 
1.2140.nptl and although the package requires the kernel to be installed. 
Apt silently installed it without matching this requirement, I was 
wondering why that was. I understand that it doesn't install the kernel 
package automatically, but it could/should protest or give at least 
feedback that one should install that package too.

I didn't tested it with Yum though.

 
> Have you looked at "Dynamic Kernel Module Support"? 
> http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2003-March/023795.html
> (I haven't yet but intend to..) The described intent in the link above is 
> actually for the reverse situation compared to what we're talking now but 
> I think it could be used for our purposes just as well... (assuming it 
> works and has no further complications of its own :)

I thought DKMS would require building modules on the end-users system. 
Although a viable alternative, I'm not interested in a solution that 
forces a user to compile stuff (even when done automatically).

It would be nice to have some standard way for (external) kernel modules 
to be compiled so that it can be automated much easier. (Makefile 
variables to define the kernel-version or kernel-dir). I guess DKMS 
requires something like that too.

OT: In my opinion it's better for end-users (or production systems) not to 
have a compiler (and development-packages) installed. Either to force 
sysadmins to properly package (and test) the software they need, or to 
avoid/discourage end-users to start downloading tarballs and 
compiling/installing stuff.

Not using packages means no traces and no way to automagically upgrade a 
system. Most people however don't grasp that ;(

--   dag wieers,  dag at wieers.com,  http://dag.wieers.com/   --
[Any errors in spelling, tact or fact are transmission errors]