Jeremy,


On Sat, 2 Apr 2005, Jeremy Sanders wrote:

> On Fri, 1 Apr 2005, Connie Sieh wrote:
> 
> > Only problem with changing the default kernel from the standard redhat is
> > that many just want it to be standard redhat.  That is why we provide the
> > alternate kernels in contrib.  Users who want default redhat get that and
> > other users who want alternate kernels can install them if needed.
> 
> It would be nice if the xfs modules could be packaged as a separate rpm, 
> and not as a whole new kernel. I wonder if this is possible without 
> affecting the rest of the kernel?

It might be.  If you want to research this then please do.

> 
> > It is easy to make a site that has a alternate default kernel if you
> > really need the alternate kernel as the default with out having to install
> > it yourself.  Note that the installer does NOT know how to make xfs
> > filesystems during the install.
> 
> Isn't it true that Fedora allows the "xfs" kernel boot line on the 
> installer, which enables xfs filesystems? If so it may be simple to enable 
> these options in SL.
> 
> See http://www.fedorafaq.org/#reiserjfs

Yes it does and RedHat took all that code out of the installer.
Please research how much work it would be to put it back.

> 
> >> As xfs is included in upstream 2.6 kernels, I would naively think that
> >> enabling it would be fairly easy and would not clash with RedHat's
> >> modifications. Is this a correct assumption?
> >
> > Have not tried it.  If you could try it and let us know if this is true
> > or not that would be very useful.
> 
> Looking at the source rpms, it was very easy to get xfs, reiserfs and jfs 
> filesystems to be built from the rpm. All I did was to add
> 
> CONFIG_XFS_FS=m
> CONFIG_REISERFS_FS=m
> CONFIG_JFS_FS=m
> 
> to the end of each of the kernel-*.config files in the source rpm. This 
> made each of the file systems as modules.
> 
> If people are interested, they can get RPMS with xfs, reiser and jfs 
> enabled here:
> 
> http://www-xray.ast.cam.ac.uk/~jss/data/rpms/
> 
> I've also rebuilt the utility packages from Fedora which allow fsck, and 
> making the file systems (xfsprogs, reiserfs-utils and jfsutils).

Thanks very much for researching and making these rpms available.
These can be included in contrib now.  Is that ok with you?

> 
> Presumably building these as modules should not affect the rest of the 
> kernel if they are unused, although the kernels haven't gone through QA... 
> It would be nice if the modules could be built as kernel addon packages, 
> though I don't know it this is possible yet.

If you could research this it would be appreciated.

> 
> Thanks
> 
> Jeremy
> 
> -- 
> Jeremy Sanders <[log in to unmask]>   http://www-xray.ast.cam.ac.uk/~jss/
> X-Ray Group, Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, UK.
> Public Key Server PGP Key ID: E1AAE053
> 

-Connie Sieh