Re: Driver Disk v3 format

[Mike Young]

That makes a lot of sense. This has been all very new to me. I'm a file
system guy and the one who worked on all the driver packaging is gone. So
we've not been using the ddiskit format at all. Everything's still based on
mod_devel_kit to generate driver update disks for RHEL and SLES. But then
things went awry with RHEL 6.

So I'm building in ddiskit support to generate the necessary RPMs and will
see if the new ddv3 format drivers work for RHEL >= 5.1. If so, that will
simplify things immensely. So I'm pretty pleased now that I found this
group. I was pretty lost as to the direction over the weekend. :)

From:  Moray Henderson 
Reply-To:  Discussion of Development and Customization of the Red Hat Linux
Installer 
Date:  Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:28:01 +0000
To:  'Discussion of Development and Customization of the Red Hat Linux
Installer' 
Subject:  RE: Driver Disk v3 format

Just spotted that some useful info was sent to me off the kickstart list:
> From: Martin Sivak [mailto:[e-mail]]
> Sent: 26 January 2012 11:04
> Subject: Re: [Fwd: RE: Adding drivers]
>
> Hi,
>
> there were couple of DD versions..
>
> Release notes for 5.1 mention new rpm version of driverdisc indeed. But
> that is still the RHEL5 version (eg. containing modules.cgz,
> modules.dep, modules-info and rpm files). In RHEL5, anaconda doesn't
> care about RPMs, it just passes them to Yum so the used drivers are
> also installed to the destination system.
>
> There is a different format for RHEL6, we removed the modules.cgz and
> accompanying files and used only RPMS. Here anaconda uses Provides:
> kernel-modules to detect the RPMs it needs to look at.
>
> ddiskit should be doing RHEL5 Driver Update disks (you can check it by
> looking at the structure), because RHEL6 needs just a rpms/<arch>
> directory (and /rhdd3 file) with createrepo done on it.
>
> There is documentation about the RHEL6 format here:

http://git.fedorahosted.org/git/?p=anaconda.git;a=blob;f=docs/driverdisc.txt...
ee3a305f415794313327378c5d53a38e8b29103;hb=rhel6-branch
> RHEL5 was more complicated because of all the files, so there is no
> consistent documentation and we prefer using ddiskit tool.

From: Mike Young [mailto:[e-mail]]
Sent: 31 January 2012 16:29
To: Discussion of Development and Customization of the Red Hat Linux
Installer
Subject: Re: Driver Disk v3 format

That's very helpful to know Moray. Thank you for that added info.

Best,

Mike

From: Moray Henderson 
Reply-To: Discussion of Development and Customization of the Red Hat Linux
Installer 
Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:47:26 +0000
To: 
Subject: RE: Driver Disk v3 format

From: Mike Young [mailto:[e-mail]]
Sent: 30 January 2012 17:48

Hi,
First of all, I apologize re-opening such an old thread. But while I have
found some clarifications on the file system layout for the ddv3 drivers,
along with some patches, I have been unable to actually find any real
documentation on how to create a ddv3 driver.
For example, I see the structure is as follows:
> DDv3 structure
>
> /
> |rhdd3   - DD marker, contains the DD's description string
> /rpms
> |  /i386 - contains RPMs for this arch and acts as Yum repo
> |  /i586
> |  /x86_64
> |  /ppc
> |  /...

But what I don't see is what else it might be looking for. Do I still
package these folders into a .iso package?
If there's some documentation on this procedure, I'd really appreciate a
link to it. The search terms I'm using must be too generic and the only
thing that reports anything substantive is ddv3. Unfortunately, everything
leads back to this thread.
Thanks!

Mike

There¹s been a bit of discussion of this over on kickstart-list recently J
The best way to create driver disks is using ddiskit
http://dup.et.redhat.com/ddiskit/ .  Beware which distro you¹re using,
though.  RHEL 5.1 Release Notes state that Anaconda now supports the v3 rpm
format, but the Anacondas of CentOS 5.6 and 5.7 do not contain the necessary
code.   I needed a JMicron(R) JMC250 PCI-E Ethernet Adapter.  After fighting
the Big Snake for several days, I gave up, put the kmod-jme rpm from ELRepo
http://elrepo.org/tiki/tiki-index.php into my main repository and
installed it via kickstart.  I don¹tconfigure networking until first boot,
so I could get away with that.

Moray.
³To err is human; to purr, feline.²
_______________________________________________ Anaconda-devel-list mailing
list 
[e-mail]://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/anacon
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Driver Disk v3 format

[Martin Sivak]

Hi,
> So I'm building in ddiskit support to generate the necessary RPMs and
> will see if the new ddv3 format drivers work for RHEL >= 5.1.

No, it does not. Only in RHEL6.

RHEL5 also requires the modules to exactly match the running kernel. In RHEL6 you only need to use compatible symbols (so you can use the DD in more than one 6.x release).

Martin

----- Original Message -----
> That makes a lot of sense. This has been all very new to me. I'm a
> file system guy and the one who worked on all the driver packaging
> is gone. So we've not been using the ddiskit format at all.
> Everything's still based on mod_devel_kit to generate driver update
> disks for RHEL and SLES. But then things went awry with RHEL 6.
>
> So I'm building in ddiskit support to generate the necessary RPMs and
> will see if the new ddv3 format drivers work for RHEL >= 5.1. If so,
> that will simplify things immensely. So I'm pretty pleased now that
> I found this group. I was pretty lost as to the direction over the
> weekend. :)
>
> From: Moray Henderson < [e-mail] >
> Reply-To: Discussion of Development and Customization of the Red Hat
> Linux Installer < [e-mail] >
> Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:28:01 +0000
> To: 'Discussion of Development and Customization of the Red Hat Linux
> Installer' < [e-mail] >
> Subject: RE: Driver Disk v3 format
>
> Just spotted that some useful info was sent to me off the kickstart
> list:
> > From: Martin Sivak [ mailto:[e-mail] ]
> > Sent: 26 January 2012 11:04
> > Subject: Re: [Fwd: RE: Adding drivers]
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > there were couple of DD versions..
> >
> > Release notes for 5.1 mention new rpm version of driverdisc indeed.
> > But
> > that is still the RHEL5 version (eg. containing modules.cgz,
> > modules.dep, modules-info and rpm files). In RHEL5, anaconda
> > doesn't
> > care about RPMs, it just passes them to Yum so the used drivers are
> > also installed to the destination system.
> >
> > There is a different format for RHEL6, we removed the modules.cgz
> > and
> > accompanying files and used only RPMS. Here anaconda uses Provides:
> > kernel-modules to detect the RPMs it needs to look at.
> >
> > ddiskit should be doing RHEL5 Driver Update disks (you can check it
> > by
> > looking at the structure), because RHEL6 needs just a rpms/<arch>
> > directory (and /rhdd3 file) with createrepo done on it.
> >
> > There is documentation about the RHEL6 format here:
> >
> > http://git.fedorahosted.org/git/?p=anaconda.git;a=blob;f=docs/driverdisc.txt...
> >
> > RHEL5 was more complicated because of all the files, so there is no
> > consistent documentation and we prefer using ddiskit tool.
>
> From: Mike Young [ mailto:[e-mail] ]
> Sent: 31 January 2012 16:29
> To: Discussion of Development and Customization of the Red Hat Linux
> Installer
> Subject: Re: Driver Disk v3 format
>
> That's very helpful to know Moray. Thank you for that added info.
>
> Best,
>
> Mike
>
> From: Moray Henderson < [e-mail] >
> Reply-To: Discussion of Development and Customization of the Red Hat
> Linux Installer < [e-mail] >
> Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:47:26 +0000
> To: < [e-mail] >
> Subject: RE: Driver Disk v3 format
>
> From: Mike Young [ mailto:[e-mail] ]
> Sent: 30 January 2012 17:48
>
> Hi, First of all, I apologize re-opening such an old thread. But
> while I have found some clarifications on the file system layout for
> the ddv3 drivers, along with some patches, I have been unable to
> actually find any real documentation on how to create a ddv3 driver.
> For example, I see the structure is as follows: > DDv3 structure >
> -------------- > / > |rhdd3   - DD marker, contains the DD's
> description string > /rpms > |  /i386 - contains RPMs for this arch
> and acts as Yum repo > |  /i586 > |  /x86_64 > |  /ppc > |  /... But
> what I don't see is what else it might be looking for. Do I still
> package these folders into a .iso package? If there's some
> documentation on this procedure, I'd really appreciate a link to it.
> The search terms I'm using must be too generic and the only thing
> that reports anything substantive is ddv3. Unfortunately, everything
> leads back to this thread. Thanks! Mike
>
> There’s been a bit of discussion of this over on kickstart-list
> recently J The best way to create driver disks is using ddiskit .
> Beware which distro you’re using, though. RHEL 5.1 Release Notes
> state that Anaconda now supports the v3 rpm format, but the
> Anacondas of CentOS 5.6 and 5.7 do not contain the necessary code. I
> needed a JMicron(R) JMC250 PCI-E Ethernet Adapter. After fighting
> the Big Snake for several days, I gave up, put the kmod-jme rpm from
> ELRepo into my main repository and installed it via kickstart. I
> don’tconfigure networking until first boot, so I could get away with
> that.
>
> Moray.
>
> “To err is human; to purr, feline.”
>
> _______________________________________________ Anaconda-devel-list
> mailing list [e-mail]
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/anaconda-devel-list
> _______________________________________________ Anaconda-devel-list
> mailing list [e-mail]
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/anaconda-devel-list
> _______________________________________________
> Anaconda-devel-list mailing list
> [e-mail]
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/anaconda-devel-list

Driver Disk v3 format

[Mike Young]

Thanks for that clarification, Martin!

On 2/1/12 6:10 AM, "Martin Sivak"  wrote:
> Hi,
> > So I'm building in ddiskit support to generate the necessary RPMs and
> > will see if the new ddv3 format drivers work for RHEL >= 5.1.
>
> No, it does not. Only in RHEL6.
>
> RHEL5 also requires the modules to exactly match the running kernel. In
> RHEL6 you only need to use compatible symbols (so you can use the DD in
> more than one 6.x release).
>
> Martin
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> > That makes a lot of sense. This has been all very new to me. I'm a
> > file system guy and the one who worked on all the driver packaging
> > is gone. So we've not been using the ddiskit format at all.
> > Everything's still based on mod_devel_kit to generate driver update
> > disks for RHEL and SLES. But then things went awry with RHEL 6.
> >
> > So I'm building in ddiskit support to generate the necessary RPMs and
> > will see if the new ddv3 format drivers work for RHEL >= 5.1. If so,
> > that will simplify things immensely. So I'm pretty pleased now that
> > I found this group. I was pretty lost as to the direction over the
> > weekend. :)
> >
> > From: Moray Henderson < [e-mail] >
> > Reply-To: Discussion of Development and Customization of the Red Hat
> > Linux Installer < [e-mail] >
> > Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:28:01 +0000
> > To: 'Discussion of Development and Customization of the Red Hat Linux
> > Installer' < [e-mail] >
> > Subject: RE: Driver Disk v3 format
> >
> > Just spotted that some useful info was sent to me off the kickstart
> > list:
> > > From: Martin Sivak [ mailto:[e-mail] ]
> > > Sent: 26 January 2012 11:04
> > > Subject: Re: [Fwd: RE: Adding drivers]
> > >
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > there were couple of DD versions..
> > >
> > > Release notes for 5.1 mention new rpm version of driverdisc indeed.
> > > But
> > > that is still the RHEL5 version (eg. containing modules.cgz,
> > > modules.dep, modules-info and rpm files). In RHEL5, anaconda
> > > doesn't
> > > care about RPMs, it just passes them to Yum so the used drivers are
> > > also installed to the destination system.
> > >
> > > There is a different format for RHEL6, we removed the modules.cgz
> > > and
> > > accompanying files and used only RPMS. Here anaconda uses Provides:
> > > kernel-modules to detect the RPMs it needs to look at.
> > >
> > > ddiskit should be doing RHEL5 Driver Update disks (you can check it
> > > by
> > > looking at the structure), because RHEL6 needs just a rpms/<arch>
> > > directory (and /rhdd3 file) with createrepo done on it.
> > >
> > > There is documentation about the RHEL6 format here:
> > >
> > >
> >
> > http://git.fedorahosted.org/git/?p=anaconda.git;a=blob;f=docs/driverdisc.
> > txt;h=dee3a305f415794313327378c5d53a38e8b29103;hb=rhel6-branch
> > >
> > > RHEL5 was more complicated because of all the files, so there is no
> > > consistent documentation and we prefer using ddiskit tool.
> >
> > From: Mike Young [ mailto:[e-mail] ]
> > Sent: 31 January 2012 16:29
> > To: Discussion of Development and Customization of the Red Hat Linux
> > Installer
> > Subject: Re: Driver Disk v3 format
> >
> > That's very helpful to know Moray. Thank you for that added info.
> >
> > Best,
> >
> > Mike
> >
> > From: Moray Henderson < [e-mail] >
> > Reply-To: Discussion of Development and Customization of the Red Hat
> > Linux Installer < [e-mail] >
> > Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:47:26 +0000
> > To: < [e-mail] >
> > Subject: RE: Driver Disk v3 format
> >
> > From: Mike Young [ mailto:[e-mail] ]
> > Sent: 30 January 2012 17:48
> >
> > Hi, First of all, I apologize re-opening such an old thread. But
> > while I have found some clarifications on the file system layout for
> > the ddv3 drivers, along with some patches, I have been unable to
> > actually find any real documentation on how to create a ddv3 driver.
> > For example, I see the structure is as follows: > DDv3 structure >
> > -------------- > / > |rhdd3   - DD marker, contains the DD's
> > description string > /rpms > |  /i386 - contains RPMs for this arch
> > and acts as Yum repo > |  /i586 > |  /x86_64 > |  /ppc > |  /... But
> > what I don't see is what else it might be looking for. Do I still
> > package these folders into a .iso package? If there's some
> > documentation on this procedure, I'd really appreciate a link to it.
> > The search terms I'm using must be too generic and the only thing
> > that reports anything substantive is ddv3. Unfortunately, everything
> > leads back to this thread. Thanks! Mike
> >
> > There¹s been a bit of discussion of this over on kickstart-list
> > recently J The best way to create driver disks is using ddiskit .
> > Beware which distro you¹re using, though. RHEL 5.1 Release Notes
> > state that Anaconda now supports the v3 rpm format, but the
> > Anacondas of CentOS 5.6 and 5.7 do not contain the necessary code. I
> > needed a JMicron(R) JMC250 PCI-E Ethernet Adapter. After fighting
> > the Big Snake for several days, I gave up, put the kmod-jme rpm from
> > ELRepo into my main repository and installed it via kickstart. I
> > don¹tconfigure networking until first boot, so I could get away with
> > that.
> >
> > Moray.
> >
> > ³To err is human; to purr, feline.²
> >
> > _______________________________________________ Anaconda-devel-list
> > mailing list [e-mail]
> > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/anaconda-devel-list
> > _______________________________________________ Anaconda-devel-list
> > mailing list [e-mail]
> > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/anaconda-devel-list
> > _______________________________________________
> > Anaconda-devel-list mailing list
> > [e-mail]
> > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/anaconda-devel-list
>
> Anaconda-devel-list mailing list
> [e-mail]
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/anaconda-devel-list

Driver Disk v3 format

[Moray Henderson]

> From: Martin Sivak [mailto:[e-mail]]
> Sent: 01 February 2012 13:11
> > So I'm building in ddiskit support to generate the necessary RPMs and
> > will see if the new ddv3 format drivers work for RHEL >= 5.1.
>
> No, it does not. Only in RHEL6.
>
> RHEL5 also requires the modules to exactly match the running kernel. In
> RHEL6 you only need to use compatible symbols (so you can use the DD in
> more than one 6.x release).

That could be a confusion in terminology: ddv3 will not work in RHEL 5, but from RHEL 5.1 the Release Notes ( 
http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5/html/5.1_Releas...) claim "Driver Update Disks now support Red Hat's Driver Update Program RPM-based packaging. If a driver disk uses the newer format, it is possible to include RPM packaged drivers that will be preserved across system updates."  So unless the Release Notes or ddiskit documentation are misleading, ddiskit-0.9.9 should be able to produce a disk of rpm-based drivers, supporting minor kernel updates, for RHEL 5.  It's just not full ddv3.

Of course I've never tried any of this: I'm using CentOS, and that's Different.

Moray.
“To err is human; to purr, feline.”