RFC: kernel-modules in Fedora Extras

[Thorsten Leemhuis]

Am Samstag, den 07.01.2006, 07:25 +0100 schrieb Ralf Corsepius:
> On Fri, 2006-01-06 at 18:17 +0100, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
> > Am Freitag, den 06.01.2006, 18:04 +0100 schrieb Ralf Corsepius:
> > > On Fri, 2006-01-06 at 17:26 +0100, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
> > > > Am Freitag, den 06.01.2006, 11:12 -0500 schrieb Dan Williams:
> > > Consider the current nvidia disaster people are facing with the kernel
> > > drivers on livna.
> > 
> > You mean this "disaster" that is around for ~two years already?
> If you mean that kernel-module updates with livna modules have never
> worked smoothly with yum, yes.

That's why we discuss this stuff here and work on a proposal that works
better.

We know that we need support from yum (or a yum-plugin) to make it work
smoothly. 

> >  Seems people ignored it for a long time and it works mostly fine for
> > a lot of people. 
> It doesn't work for anybody.

We know. 

> > (if people wonder what we are talking about see
> > http://bugzilla.livna.org/show_bug.cgi?id=725 )
> 
> Let me demonstrate the problem, as it currently happens:
> 
> Given a clean FC4 system with livna's nvidia packages installed, not
> having been updated for some weeks (During this time, a kernel and a
> kernel-module/userspace library update has taken place)
> 
> # rpm -qa 'kernel*' nvidia-glx
> kernel-2.6.14-1.1644_FC4
> nvidia-glx-1.0.8174-0.lvn.1.4
> kernel-module-nvidia-2.6.14-1.1644_FC4-1.0.8174-0.lvn.1.4
> 
> 
> # yum update
> ...
> Resolving Dependencies
> --> Populating transaction set with selected packages. Please wait.
> ---> Package kernel.i686 0:2.6.14-1.1653_FC4 set to be installed
> ---> Package nvidia-glx.i386 0:1.0.8178-0.lvn.1.4 set to be updated
> --> Running transaction check
> --> Processing Dependency: kernel-module-nvidia = 1.0.8178-0.lvn.1.4 for package: nvidia-glx
> --> Processing Dependency: nvidia-glx = 0:1.0.8174 for package: kernel-module-nvidia-2.6.14-1.1644_FC4
> --> Restarting Dependency Resolution with new changes.
> --> Populating transaction set with selected packages. Please wait.
> ---> Package kernel-module-nvidia-2.6.14-1.1653_FC4.i686 0:1.0.8178-0.lvn.1.4 set to be updated
> --> Running transaction check
> --> Processing Dependency: nvidia-glx = 0:1.0.8174 for package: kernel-module-nvidia-2.6.14-1.1644_FC4
> --> Finished Dependency Resolution
> Error: Missing Dependency: nvidia-glx = 0:1.0.8174 is needed by package kernel-module-nvidia-2.6.14-1.1644_FC4
> 
> => A required package is missing. yum is correct in aborting.
> 
> Could you please explain, how this kind of breakage is solved with FC5,
> your kernel-module RFC and the yum-plugin you mentioned?

The yum plugin doesn't exist yet, so no, I can't.

But in the new scheme the "$(uname -r)" parts isn't in the name of the
package anymore, so this problems shouldn't show up. So discussing it
here in this scope is irrelevant afaics. Correct me if I'm wrong, maybe
I overlooked something.

There are other problems, that hopefully are handled by the plugin.

> The only way I see, is to add the missing packages to the repos, i.e. to
> rebuild the kernel-modules and module-userspace-libs for all kernels
> having ever been shipped for a Fedora release: 

This was discussed earlier. People didn't like the idea - they only
wanted to build for the latest kernel.

I disagree -- we IMHO should build for the latest kernel and the one
that was shipped in core. Why? There are people with modems or
bandwidth-per-month limitations that don't update the kernel. Yes,
that's dangerous, but people do it. 

But we can't build for all kernels. This wastes to much time IMHO. And
old kernels are deleted for the updates-repo anyway -- building therefor
is not possible (no, maintaining a local all-old-kernels-repo also is
wasted time IMHO). 


> # yum update --enablerepo=local
> ..
> Resolving Dependencies
> --> Populating transaction set with selected packages. Please wait.
> ---> Package kernel-module-nvidia-2.6.14-1.1644_FC4.i686 0:1.0.8178-0.lvn.1.4 set to be updated
> ---> Package kernel.i686 0:2.6.14-1.1656_FC4 set to be installed
> ---> Package nvidia-glx.i386 0:1.0.8178-0.lvn.1.4 set to be updated
> ...
> Installing:
>  kernel                  i686       2.6.14-1.1656_FC4  updates-released   14 M
> Updating:
>  kernel-module-nvidia-2.6.14-1.1644_FC4  i686       1.0.8178-0.lvn.1.4  local          1.5 M
>  nvidia-glx              i386       1.0.8178-0.lvn.1.4  livna             3.9 M
> ...

> I guess, this is what I assume you are referring to as "yum bug":

"yum bug" is probably not the right name -- "yum <-> old-kernel-module
standard problems" would probably a better description

>  Yum
> updates the kernel, but doesn't add the kernel-module corresponding to
> the "new being installed" kernel.

It can't with the old scheme without special knowledge of that scheme. 
-- 
Thorsten Leemhuis <fedora at leemhuis.info>