Sandeep_K_Shandilya Dell com wrote:
Hello Bill We search for drivers in usb-storage very early in the install phase (only usb-storage and cdrom and floppy disk drivers are loaded). at this time we don't have any disk controller or NIC drivers loaded so we will not be searching hard disks or luns on a SAN etc..., so we don't have a problem in this regard.
I wish people would reply in context, I am not at all sure I know which of Bills points this relates to.
As a user, _I_ want my drivers to be in the kernels shipped by my vendor.I don't want (probably old) drivers hidden away in some USB storage some place. I don't really want them on a CD either. I especially don't want to fire up gcc during install to build a version that matches the install kernel!.
The very best place for my drivers is right there in the kernel shipped by my vendor, whether the vendor is Red Hat/the Fedora Project, Novell/SUSE/OpenSUSE, Debian, Canonical/Ubuntu or Calathumpian Linux Enterprises.
If Dell has no commercial secrets to hide, then I'd think the best way to maintain the relevant drivers is to join Linus, Alan Cox and the rest on the official kernel tree. It's what Adaptec did, when I used one of their SCSI adaptors years ago. You changes will be subject to scrutiny by others and so help the quality of any changes you make.
By all means certify your kit for RHEL, SLES, SLED and whatever seems good, but if there are problems that you need to fix, provide the patches directly to the relevant vendor and/or submit them directly to the official kernel.
If you think you can guess which RHEL kernel people might use to install, then you need to follow Fedora for a while and see what tools are evolving there, including for making custom respins. Remastering Fedora's becoming a trivial affair, and it's likely tools used there will be used in future RHEL.
Regards, Sandeep.-----Original Message----- From: anaconda-devel-list-bounces redhat com [mailto:anaconda-devel-list-bounces redhat com] On Behalf Of Bill Nottingham Sent: Monday, March 17, 2008 10:00 PM To: Discussion of Development and Customization of the Red Hat Linux Installer Subject: Re: [ PATCH ] RFC: Search and load drivers automaticallyfromusb-storage mediaSandeep_K_Shandilya Dell com (Sandeep_K_Shandilya Dell com) said:Imagine trying to search 500 SAN partitions for driver updates. <sandeep> We only search usb-storage devices.Well, you only search things marked 'removable'. *Assuming* SANs, etc. don't set that flag you'll be OK, although I'm not certain they are all sane in this regard.Right, but what good does embedded usb-storage with drivers do you forthe next OS release a few months later? <sandeep> 1. The same is with hardware and firmware which keep upgrading everyfew months.2. OEMs like Dell have baselined to, say, version RHEL 5.0 Every timethe hardware/firmware changeswhich calls for a new driver then we will qualify the new driverand release it on our supportpage. It will be a very exhaustive effort to qualify all newdrivers for every update that Redhat releases. Then get the drivers *IN THOSE UPDATES*. Heck, thats why those updates are done. Bill _______________________________________________ Anaconda-devel-list mailing list Anaconda-devel-list redhat com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/anaconda-devel-list _______________________________________________ Anaconda-devel-list mailing list Anaconda-devel-list redhat com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/anaconda-devel-list
-- Cheers John -- spambait 1aaaaaaa coco merseine nu Z1aaaaaaa coco merseine nu -- Advice http://webfoot.com/advice/email.top.php http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375 You cannot reply off-list:-)