[elrepo] problem building kmod-wl on Centos6.3 with Elrepo-kernel-ml.De

[Alan Bartlett]

Hi Johan,

On 11 January 2013 09:32, Johan Vermeulen <jvermeulen at cawdekempen.be> wrote:
>
<snip>
>
> I checked the device:id pairing - it's 14e4:4727- so installing
> kmod-compat-wireless should work but it doesn't.

The compat-wireless kmod package should provide support for that
wireless card with the distributed kernel. Perhaps Phil Perry (package
maintainer) will comment / make a suggestion, when his time permits?

> I am concerned about stable ABI, but I was thinking -----> it seems to me I
> have to build the kmod-wl rpm on a lot of laptops in order to get the
> Broadcom cards to work.
> I want updated machines, so on a kernel update, I have to redo the build,
> unless I'm wrong.
> That's not possible.
> So I thougt better to have Centos laptops with ml-kernels 3.7..... than go
> to Centos6.4 in a while and still have older Centos6.3 kernels
>
> But building the kmod-wl on the latest Centos kernel works, so for the
> moment the users have wireless. :-)

If you build the kmod-wl package on one of the laptops, then you job
is almost done. Copy the kmod-wl-*.rpm file you have just built to a
USB memory stick and then use it to install the package on each of the
other laptop systems. The package should remain usable for all kernels
released for CentOS 6.3 . . . it may need to be rebuilt for the first
released kernel of CentOS 6.4 but that is something for the future.

If you use a kernel from the ELRepo Project kernel-lt or kernel-ml
series, there is no concept of a stable ABI and none of the ELRepo
Project kmod packages are built to be used with either of those kernel
series. The best way to consider either the kernel-lt or kernel-ml
packages is as a 'super kmod package' in its own right. If you need to
build an 'external' module for one of those kernels, it will have to
be rebuilt for each and every new kernel release.

So just to clarify, as I now understand your situation, you have
successfully built the kmod-wl package for the current default CentOS
6.3 kernel and once it is distributed to all of the laptop systems
they will all have a working wireless network connection?

Alan.