Yum is deeply flawed lately. Removes needed kernel modules by mistake

[Matthew Saltzman]

On Wed, 2008-03-19 at 09:02 +1100, Peter McNeil wrote:
> Paul Johnson wrote:
> > I came to work today and glanced at the yum logs.  When it installs a
> > ...
> > I can't believe I'm the only one seeing this, but nobody else is
> > yelling about it, so I must be the only one.  That makes me think I've
> > got something configured incorrectly.  I can report in bugzilla, but
> > won't do that until I'm sure it is not some bonehead mistake I've
> > made.  At least I'm consistent. It is happening on all the PCs I
> > administer...
> >   
> Re the Nvidia drivers, no you're not making any mistake, this is a 
> problem with the livna nvidia packaging, the problem is they update the 
> version numbers and the kernel module barfs when it sees a different 
> version number (I think) so they remove the old module.
> 
> I just reverted to doing the nvidia install manually you need to unpack 
> the Nvidia-blah.run using the -x flag, change to that unpacked NVIDIA 
> directory and run nvidia-installer -K to just install a new kernel module.
> 
> Having said that the livna packages are certainly easy and a good thing, 
> just not if you have a new kernel with bugs (like the 2.6.24 kernels)
> 

I believe the problem here was that the nVidia module version was
updated from something like 169.4 to 169.12.  Because no 169.12 was
built for the old kernel, the old nVidia module was erased.  The kernel
version numbers are part of the kmod RPM name, not its version.

You can build the new nVidia driver RPMs for the old kernel yourself
from the Livna SRPM.  Instructions are in the recent archives of this
mailing list.

> Cheers,
> Peter.
> 
> 
-- 
                Matthew Saltzman

Clemson University Mathematical Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs