[elrepo-devel] el7 Kernel Build

[Jamie Bainbridge]

You can't strictly follow the driver version in the EL kernels.
Sometimes the in-kernel driver is an older version but with some
patches which resolve issues in later versions.

For example, EL might have driver "version 2.0" of something, but also
include patches for issues which are resolved in "version 2.2". The
in-kernel driver hasn't been updated to "version 2.2" because it
doesn't have all the patches which made up 2.2, only some of the
patches.

Check the changelog of the latest kernel (with the package installed:
rpm -q --changelog kernel) and search for the driver name to see what
has actually changed.

If your aim is just to get an updated driver, then changing the entire
kernel is a bit heavy-handed. You can just compile a newer version of
the driver and remain on the existing, tested, stable, known-working
kernel.

To save you compiling a driver, ELRepo packages many drivers of later
versions, check the packages starting "kmod" -
http://elrepo.org/tiki/Packages


On 14 October 2015 at 07:32, Duke Pham via elrepo-devel
<elrepo-devel at lists.elrepo.org> wrote:
> Hi Elrepo-dev,
>
> On some linux websites, I see the support for mismatched version
> combinations between EL kernel and EL Linux version. For example: el7 Kernel
> 3.10.0-123.el7.x86_64 runs on el6 RHEL6u7
>
> Does anyone know how this can be done? Does it mean that I have to get the
> source code of el7 Kernel 3.10.0-123.el7 and build on the machine with el6
> Linux Version? Is there any prebuilt package somewhere. The reason is that
> elrepo el6 kernel 3.10 doesn't have the latest device drivers, thus I have
> to get the distro kernel from Centos. However, since Centos 6 linux version
> doesn't support 3.10 kernel, then I have to look into el7 Kernel 3.10. So
> basically, I look into install the el7 Kernel 3.10.0-123.el7.x86_64 on el6
> REHL6u7. Is it a good approach? (In our system, due to some dependency, we
> can't upgrade to Rhel7, but we need the kernel 3.10 with latest device
> driver)
>
> Thank
> --Duke
>
>
>
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