Mistake [LWN.net]

Mistake

Posted Sep 30, 2004 7:24 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: Mistake by elanthis
Parent article: Driver core functions: GPL only

Ok. Currently distribution makers avoid automatic kernel upgrades (if you'll not count Gentoo and such). And this should be so since_______________(insert your reasoning here).

I've not seen any. For the most part kernel is repository of hardware drivers. Upgrade of it looks like a perfect way to get support for the new hardware. And no, distributors choice to not provide latest kernels for old distributions has nothing to do with kernel. You can use kernel 2.4.27 in place of 2.4.0 easily (no userspace changes are required unless you want to use new, added functionality - it's your choice, not obligation) and you can not expect to keep drivers API unchanged between 2.4.x and 2.6.x so what's the problem ?

And if you think "stable ABI" will solve this last problem (drivers from 2.6.x in 2.4.x, drivers from 2.8.x in 2.6.x, etc) then look here. Currently Save-Solaris-x86.ORG is running Solaris 7 x86 while AMI (now LSI Logic) corrects problems with their driver under Solaris 8 - and this is despite huge (real huge, no sarcasm here) efforts from Sun side to keep usage of drivers across the broad range of Solaris releases possible. No, it just does not work. You still end with needing some explicit changes if you want to support few major revisions of system - and then why not to port driver to new API ?

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You can't always cleanly replace a distros kernel..

Posted Sep 30, 2004 8:18 UTC (Thu) by csamuel (✭ supporter ✭, #2624) [Link]

> And no, distributors choice to not provide latest kernels for old
> distributions has nothing to do with kernel. You can use kernel
> 2.4.27 in place of 2.4.0 easily (no userspace changes are required
> unless you want to use new, added functionality - it's your choice,
> not obligation)

Thus speaks someone who hasn't used Redhat Enterprise Linux 3, where RH
backported NPTL from 2.6 and enabled it in glibc with the result that if
you install a stock 2.4 kernel instead of a RHEL3 kernel RPM various
userland programs (such as up2date for instance) break. :-(

If you install a stock 2.6 kernel it all magically works again..

Sigh..

You can't always cleanlyreplace a distros kernel.. distro support problem

Posted Sep 30, 2004 8:51 UTC (Thu) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]

That's a vendor issue, not a kernel hacker problem. People pay RH big
money for RHEL and RHEL "enterprise quality" support, and they should be
talking to RH if they don't get it. It's RH's choice to do such
backporting (not that I disagree with their reasons, but it remains their
choice in any case), and their problem to support their choice.

As for users, well, it was the user choice to spend all that money and go
with RHEL. If they aren't happy with the results, maybe they better
change vendors.

Duncan

You can't always cleanly replace a distros kernel..

Posted Sep 30, 2004 9:43 UTC (Thu) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]

RHEL's support contract explicitly forbids you to use a different kernel you compiled on your own unless RH's support authorized you to do so. Not happy with that? contact RH's fine support people and complain that a certain hardware is not supported with their kernel.

An alternative route: take the kernek from the latest rawhide. It generally contains all of RH's backports.

Ditto for Mandrake/cooker , and almost any other distro.

SuSE is a sore ommition here. No way to get the latest from SuSE/"unstable" .