Using Yast doesn't actually make sense [LWN.net]

Using Yast doesn't actually make sense

Posted May 21, 2006 8:09 UTC (Sun) by error27 (subscriber, #8346)
Parent article: The Novell Partner Linux Driver Process

It doesn't actually make sense to use yast for drivers.

Let's say I worked for a RAID manufacturer. I sign up for the free email service. That's nice but it doesn't help me that much. I'm already in the beta program so I already know what new releases are coming out.

So let's say I become a full partner. Now I can just say, "Use yast to install the SCSI driver." But obviously, the customer is going to ask, "How can I use yast when I don't even have the RAID driver to install the blasted system?"

So hopefully SuSE is going to create driver disks for me I guess.

The customer completes the install then upgrades their kernel so now they can't boot. And I say, "You have to install the new driver using yast when you upgrade the kernel. Boot to the old kernel and take care of that."

But the thing is that yast doesn't normally save the old kernel after an upgrade, so the customer is righteously screwed. Since the system isn't bootable they decide to install Windows XP Server Edition instead.

It would be nice if SuSE set up a driver disk page though. That would be useful.

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Using Yast doesn't actually make sense

Posted May 25, 2006 14:46 UTC (Thu) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]

> The customer completes the install then upgrades their kernel so now they can't boot. And I say, "You have to install the new driver using yast when you upgrade the kernel. Boot to the old kernel and take care of that."

But when driver updates are available through yast online update, like the kernel is, the user would get both, the new kernel and the updated driver at the same time. So where's the problem?

Using Yast doesn't actually make sense

Posted May 25, 2006 20:41 UTC (Thu) by error27 (subscriber, #8346) [Link]

Under the old method you would would install with a driver disk. That means you don't have an foo_raid_driver.rpm. So when you upgrade the kernel there are no depends that will force you to upgrade the foo_raid_driver.rpm.

Maybe under the new process the driver disk will install a dummy rpm... I guess that would be amazing and wonderful...

The way I'm reading it, drivers would be in a seperate package from the base kernel. It's still an out of tree driver but it's distributed by SuSE. That's silliness obviously. It would make a lot more sense to include it in the stock SuSE kernel. That way you wouldn't have to worry about dummy RPMs or anything like that.