[elrepo] Backporting xhci_hcd USB 3.0 driver

[Dag Wieers]

On Thu, 18 Nov 2010, Nikki Locke wrote:

> Rather than struggle with patching drivers for my graphics card
> and VMWare to work with the latest elrepo kernel, a better
> solution to my desire to use my new USB 3.0 PCI card and disk
> would be a backport of the xhci_hcd driver.
>
> What is the likelihood of that happening?
>
> I am an experienced C & C++ programmer, but I have never done any
> kernel programming. Is it likely that I would be able to help
> with the backporting process (or even do it myself)? Is there any
> documentation anywhere that would tell me what is involved, what
> tools I need, etc.?

Hi Nikki,

It is quite unlikely that backporting this driver is feasible as the 
changes for the USB 3.0 driver touched too much of the kernel to make it 
possible. (And backporting a driver is strictly restricted to the module 
itself, as we rely on RHEL's kernel).

In the unlikely case that you succeed in backporting this driver to a RHEL 
kernel, we might build and package it and provide it through ELRepo for 
others to use.

Another option, which may not be a good solution, is to use a recent 
2.6.35 or 2.6.36 kernel instead. But ELRepo only provides those kernel 
without any support and so the responsibility is yours, and only yours if 
it breaks something or corrupts your data.

Kind regards,
-- 
-- dag wieers, dag at wieers.com, http://dag.wieers.com/
-- dagit linux solutions, info at dagit.net, http://dagit.net/

[Any errors in spelling, tact or fact are transmission errors]