Question: Linux kernel releases and Fedora kernel RPMs...

[Michael A. Peters]

On Wed, 2004-04-14 at 07:45, Dennis Gilmore wrote:

> 
> things in the kernel are very dynamic and changing versions during a release 
> could maybe break things unintentionally.

What I have found is that you can take the redhat kernel config, get
vanilla kernel source, and run "make oldconfig" using the new kernel
source - and be just fine. Been doing that since RH7 (before RH7 I just
configured everything myself - but with RH7, the distro seemed to become
more dependent on certain modules existing to not get fail messages in
the boot scripts)

The problem I have with staying at the same kernel version - often
times, there will be numerous USB (and other) devices that are in
current kernel just a few months after a RH release that will never be
supported by that version of RH/Fedora simply because they only bug fix
existing drivers, and do not backport new drivers into the current
release.

running "make oldconfig" allows me to have essentially the same options
that RH chose, but let's me answer "m" or "y" to new drivers that I may
find beneficial. Someone comes over and has a digital camera, or I buy a
new mp3 player, I don't want to have to build a new kernel at that time
because the device requires a module I don't have - I just want to plug
it in and have it work.

So I tend to build my own kernels based upon the RH kernel config, and
run "make oldconfig" - and update my custom kernel about once a month or
so (if a new vanilla isn't out, I grab the latest ac patch). Never have
I had an issue booting RH with it. The "break things unintentionally"
just has never happened. And if it did - I have the rh kernel there as
well.

But RH should not update the kernel version. They are doing what they
should do. But it is generally safe to build your own version update
kernels based upon the redhat kernel config - despite the scary message
in up2date.

-- 
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