[elrepo] Extra packages that you need to install

[Phil Perry]

On 03/01/12 11:09, Manuel Wolfshant wrote:

> kmod-coretemp
> kmod-k10temp
> kmod-it87
> lm_sensors
>
> /* to verify if coretemp+k10temp+it87+lm_sensors are still needed on RH
>   >= 6.2 */
>

WRT to hwmon drivers such as coretemp, k10temp, it87 etc - whilst many 
of these drivers are now included in RHEL, we continue to support some 
of them going forward where we can provide a "newer" driver that 
provides support for more/new chipsets etc. In these cases users can use 
the RHEL driver if it works for them or the elrepo driver if the RHEL 
driver is yet to support their particular hardware. Continuing to use 
the elrepo driver shouldn't cause any issues. These are generally a 
moving target with new hardware support constantly being added to the 
upstream kernel and Red Hat periodically backporting an updated branch 
for a point release. Inherently, RH is always going to be at least a 
year behind upstream with their kernel driver although RH are now 
releasing some of their own kmod driver updates where a driver update is 
approved for the next point release update and they wish to make it 
available earlier for the current point release.

As we don't have the specific hardware to test the vast majority of 
cases, we are very much dependent on user feedback.

Specifically, for RHEL6 we provide an updated coretemp with improved 
hardware support when that was requested:

http://elrepo.org/bugs/view.php?id=181

We originally shipped k10temp for RHEL6 as 6.0 did not have this driver. 
In fact elrepo had this driver for RHEL before it was even in the 
upstream mainline kernel!

I haven't had any requests for an updated it87 driver yet, but it was on 
my list of modules to backport for RHEL6.

At present we haven't needed to update lm_sensors for any hwmon drivers 
on RHEL6.

On a side note, it is getting more and more difficult to continue to 
backport some of these drivers for RHEL (particularly RHEL5) as the 
upstream ABI/API continues to evolve and patchsets start to use kernel 
interfaces not present in our older kernels on RHEL. This is certainly 
the case with coretemp and it87 on RHEL5 where some patches from 
kernel-3.0 onwards are not really feasible to backport.

Apologies for the long rambling answer :-)