[elrepo] issue with kmod-atl1c

[Phil Perry]

Dag Wieers wrote:
> On Wed, 24 Mar 2010, Nicolas Thierry-Mieg wrote:
> 
>> zhihua_ch at sohu.com wrote:
>>>   To  * Dag Wieers: *
>>> when I input 'uname -mr', output is '2.6.18-164.el5xen x86_64'
>>> input ' rpm -qa kernel\* | sort', output is 'kernel 2.6.18-164.el5
>>> kernel-headers-2.6.18-164.el5 kernel-xen-2.6.18-164.el5
>>> kernel-xen-devel-2.6.18-164.el5 '
>>> input 'find /lib/modules -name atl1c.ko -exec ls -ld {} \;'
>>> output is '-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 134864 Mar 24 11:22
>>> /lib/modules/2.6.18-164.el5xen/extra/atl1c/atl1c.ko'
>>> output is all above.the network card cannot use.
>>> what about the problem, how can I use the kmod rpm package?
>> you seem to be using it correctly, it's basically install the rpm and
>> you're done (though sometimes a reboot helps).
>>
>> you could try
>> modprobe -v atl1c
>>
>> if it fails, dmesg might be informative.
>>
>> as a last resort possibly reboot, since you're doing stuff to the
>> running kernel it's possible something got messed up?
> 
> It's most likely a problem with the Xen kernel and the driver. We have had 
> issues like this with other drivers as well. The obvious solution for 
> running virtualization with specific custom drivers is to migrate to KVM.
> 
> I know that is not always possible, but you may have no choice. Either 
> have no atl1c or no Xen.
> 

Indeed. I was recently looking at kmod-nvidia and xen again, and 
although the module compiles cleanly against the xen kernel, and will 
even load (modprobe) into the kernel, it still hangs the system starting 
X. So it's simply a case of not knowing until you actually test the 
module with a xen kernel, and unfortunately we simply don't have the 
hardware available to fully test every configuration for the vast 
majority of drivers we package.

Perhaps another user of kmod-atl1c might be able to verify whether 
kmod-atl1c-xen works for them. If we know/can confirm it doesn't work 
then we can withdraw the package for xen and save other users waiting 
their time.