Hello John comments inline. regards, sandeep. -----Original Message----- From: anaconda-devel-list-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx [mailto:anaconda-devel-list-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John Summerfield Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2008 5:24 AM To: Discussion of Development and Customization of the Red Hat Linux Installer Subject: Re: [ PATCH ] RFC: Search and load drivers automatically fromusb-storage media Sandeep_K_Shandilya@xxxxxxxx wrote: > Hello John > > That is what this patch is attempting to do, solve the problem of > hunting for drivers on the net. This patch is changing anaconda so > that it automagically looks for drivers in USB storage embedded inside > the box loads and installs it. Maybe not for the old hardware that you > already are using but for the upcoming servers. So you have binary-only drivers? <sandeep> dkms rpms carry source and binaries. The binarie kernel modules could be used at install time to recognise new hardware. Once install completes then you could install the dkms rpms. Here is a layout of the file system, This should make it a lot clear now. oemdrv/ oemdrv/megaraid_sas_dd.img oemdrv/mptlinux_dd.img oemdrv/abc/ oemdrv/abc/megaraid_sas_dkms.noarch.rpm oemdrv/def/ oemdrv/def/dkms-2.0.17-1.noarch.rpm oemdrv/hij/ oemdrv/hij/mptlinux-dkms.noarch.rpm the *dd.img will be used at install time( this has to contain binary kernel modules ). The rpms contain the binaries and the source. The binaries are compiled against the Dell supported RHEL distro. if you have a new rhel distro the source will be installed by dkms in /usr/src/.. you could compile the driver for your distro and use it. infact dkms is also available in the universe section on ubuntu. dkms is supported on many other linux distro's. My very favourite rescue disk is Knoppix. Sometimes I have the latest on hand, sometimes not. I am less concerned about security updates than I am about my regular distro, so provided the CD to hand boots I'm happy to use it. I use it for Linux and Windows systems alike - i can't do a lot to _repair_ a broken Windows system, but it can help with cloning it, with resizing its filesystems etc. Debian is very picky about what it allows into its distro, and Knoppix is based off Debian. Klaus Knopper, who created Knoppix, might not see value in including DKMS, he has to make some sacrifices to get it all down to a single CD. If it doesn't work with your hardware, then I can't use my favourite rescue CD. If I'm running a standard RHEL or CentOS or Fedora or Debian or *SUSE system and I have a problem, I have a well-defined path to follow to report it and in the fullness of time to get a fix. As I understand it, if I'm running one of your binary-only drivers, I don't have any support. The kernel's tainted and, I've been told, the fact of the driver's being loaded means it could have done bad things. I recall an incident, many years ago, when RH was bitten by this very issue, in respect of CDE that RH used to distribute with RHL. RH couldn't fix CDE and its supplier wouldn't or wouldn't do it in the timeframe RH required. I'm not sure that DELL would provide full support for RHEL, or even the kernel, on one of its servers. And if you think I'm difficult, go to debian.org and read some of the discussions about non-free bits in the kernel! > -- Cheers John -- spambait 1aaaaaaa@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Z1aaaaaaa@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx -- Advice http://webfoot.com/advice/email.top.php http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375 You cannot reply off-list:-) _______________________________________________ Anaconda-devel-list mailing list Anaconda-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/anaconda-devel-list _______________________________________________ Anaconda-devel-list mailing list Anaconda-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/anaconda-devel-list
