On 12/01/11 18:10, Stephan Wiesand wrote:
>
> Where "they work" at least means: there's a way to have working modules for *any* kernel installed on the system, not just the latest one, using nothing but yum or rpm. To the best of my understanding, this rules out the current ELRepo packages if/when the ABI used by the openafs modules changes, which can happen. Feedback on this issue, and the way I tackled it by making minute changes to the packaging, is still very welcome.
>

Hi Stephan,

Sorry, I've not kept up with this thread - how did you solve the above 
issue?

The default action for yum in RHEL6 is now to update kmod packages (as 
built with kmodtool); so do you retain an older compatible kernel module 
for older kernels once the kABI changes?

Presumably you're talking about a case where, for example, you have a 
module built against 2.6.32-x that supports 2.6.32-x and 2.6.32-y, but 
when 2.6.32-z is released the module doesn't weak-link. Then, on 
rebuilding the module against 2.6.32-z you find it also no longer 
weak-links back to previous 2.6.32-x and 2.6.32-y kernel series.

This is not an easy problem to solve in an automated fashion. Suppose we 
just build non-updating packages (as per the EL5 default), and build a 
new package for 2.6.32-z. That would work in the case above, but would 
fail in the case where the module built against 2.6.32-z does weak-link 
back against older kernels. You could fix this with an Obsoletes though 
I guess.

If I may ask, why the need to continue to support older kernel series 
going forward?

Regards,

Phil