Fedora 2.6.22 or later kernel on Centos 5.1

Nataraj incoming-fedora-list at rjl.com
Thu Jun 5 04:59:11 UTC 2008


On Wed, 2008-06-04 at 16:32 -0500, Roger Heflin wrote:
> Nataraj wrote:
> > Is it possible to run a 2.6.22 or later tickless kernel supporting the
> > Vmware VMI 3.0 on a Centos 5.1 system?  I had in mind using a fedora
> > kernel for this purpose.
> 
> I don't know what it takes to support vmware vmi 3.0.   When I attempt to 
> deviate from the the kernels supplied I get a vanilla kernel.org kernel and 
> compile it using the same config file that was used on the original kernel, 
> possibly changing a few settings to be close to what I need.

Thank you, this was just what I needed.  I've enabled options to improve
performance in a VMWARE virtual machine.  Perhaps there are others that
I'll want to change, but I've started with these.  All of these options
are enabled in the F9 kernel (and probably F8 and the most recent F7
kernels as well), but did not exist in the current CentOS 5.1 kernel.

CONFIG_TICK_ONESHOT=y
CONFIG_NO_HZ=y
CONFIG_HIGH_RES_TIMERS=y
CONFIG_PARAVIRT_GUEST=y
CONFIG_PARAVIRT=y
CONFIG_VMI=y

> 
> Read up on what is required to compile and install a vanilla kernel on Centos 
> and try that first.  I would probably do 2.6.25.4, I am running that on a F7 
> machine, and a number of the kernel developers regularly compile and use new 
> kernels on various Centos and Fedora versions.
> 
> This should be decent start, though some of the instructions don't count for 
> Centos 5.x series (they are Centos 4.x specific-specifically the mpt* notes):
> 
> http://howtoforge.com/kernel_compilation_centos
> 
> > 
> > Is there an easy way to know in general which kernel releases are
> > compatible with libraries/installed packages from particular linux
> > distributions?
> > 
> 
> In general almost no packages depend on the kernel.   UDEV, and any kernel 
> hardware modules are about the only things that actually care that the kernel 
> changes.   Everything else interacts through the kernel through fairly standard 
> interfaces that don't change for different kernel versions.
> 
> 
>                            Roger
> 

Nataraj





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