Installing rpm's that are not from RHN

[Hamilton, David]

-----Original Message-----
From: redhat-install-list-bounces at redhat.com on behalf of Rick Stevens
Sent: Fri 3/24/2006 12:32 PM
To: Getting started with Red Hat Linux
Subject: Re: Installing rpm's that are not from RHN
 
On Thu, 2006-03-23 at 12:25 -0600, Hamilton, David wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I was wondering if downloading rpms and installing from a site such as
> http://www.alsa-project.org/ posed any risk to a RHEL desktop computer?
> The past several kernels the module for my sound card (CS4236) has been
> left out. The only way to correct the issue is to go to alsa org and
> download the files and go through the steps. Is the above site a
> "trusted" site to RHEL users or would I be better off not trusting any
> files unless they come from RHN? I searched and the RHN doesn't seem to
> have the files needed.

Installing "foreign" RPMs won't harm the machine.  You should, however,
download Alsa's GPG key and make sure the RPMs you do download have the
same GPG key.  You should also be aware that up2date will NOT
automatically check for updates from Alsa.  You'll have to do that
manually.  It would also be of benefit if you could tell us which
version of RHEL you were running.

I find it weird that the CS4236 is not supported in the newer kernels.
Are you certain that support for that card hasn't been rolled into
another driver so that the new driver handles multiple cards?  If you're
sure that didn't occur, you should squawk your concerns to bugzilla so
RH can put the support back in.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-     If you can't beat your computer at chess...try kickboxing!     -
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Hey Rick,

I have Red Hat Desktop v. 4 
It has always puzzled me too that some kernels seem to leave out the module for my sound card.  I have posted in the past asking who makes the decision to leave it out, no one seems to know. If a new driver for the cs4236 has been rolled into another drive I have no idea how to find out.

Here's what I do know:
If the following folders and files are not included with the kernel, I have no sound. If they are included I have sound.

Path: kernel/sound/isa/cs423x
Files: snd-cs4231-lib.ko, snd-cs4236.ko and snd-cs4236-lib.ko

The past few kernels did't have the files and I had to go to ALSA site to download the missing files. If you believe the leaving of these files out is a bug, I will be more than happy to report it.

Thanks!

David
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