[elrepo] el6 kmod-ocfs2 & ocfs2-tools packages

[Dag Wieers]

On Fri, 8 Apr 2011, Phil Perry wrote:

> On 08/04/11 03:08, Mikey Austin wrote:
>
>> My company is looking to upgrade our Centos 5.x systems to SL 6.x. We
>> rely heavily on ocfs2 (x86_64 1.4.x) for our www&  mail clustering
>> (among other things). The kmod-ocfs2-1.4.7-1.el5.* and
>> ocfs2-tools-1.4.4-1.el5.* packages exist in el5 elrepo-testing, so I was
>> wondering if there are any plans for el6 versions of these packages
>> (1.4.x or similar) in the near future?
>
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>
> WRT kmod-ocfs2, Dag is the maintainer of that package so I'll let him
> address your question, but generally if there is a need then I see
> absolutely no reason why it can't be ported to el6.

IIRC ocfs2 1.4 does not build on the RHEL6 kernel, and the newer ocfs2 1.6 
which is its successor is only available with the Unbreakable Enterprise 
Kernel. (see http://oss.oracle.com/projects/ocfs2/) There is no separate 
releases, and no separate git.

So Oracle is making it harder for existing RHEL5 and future RHEL6 users to 
use ocfs2, unless you use their kernel. It should be possible to backport 
ocfs2 from the 2.6.32 kernel, or the latest mainline kernel, or maybe even 
Oracle's Enterprise Kernel, but there is no guarantee it keeps on working 
properly and/or has the same quality as Oracle's offering (and the past 
release ELRepo's package relied on).

I am not sure if we want to follow Oracle in those dark alleys without a 
flashlight.


> That said, after quickly looking at kernel.org, isn't ocfs2 already
> included in later kernels although I find no reference to it on my RHEL6
> system?

Red Hat does not support ocfs2, so it is not enabled in their kernel.

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

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