On Mon, Oct 09, 2006 at 03:13:43PM +0200, Matthias Saou wrote:
Hi,
Regarding kernel modules, as many, I got tired of :
1) Packaging them as binary rpms, tracking new kernels to release new
packages (it's almost impossible to track Rawhide btw).
2) Endless discussions about what packaging method is the best, upgrade
paths, ugliness of versions inside names, common vs. kernel specific
bits etc. etc.
So I decided to go for the dkms approach to install 3rd party kernel
modules, and things got so much simpler. It's pretty obvious : If one
can issue a simple "make" to get a required module, why go through so
much complexity for rpm packages?
There are two possible discussions which can start here :
1) What do Fedora packagers think of dkms? Up to now, no kernel modules
packages using dkms have been released in Extras, nor in 3rd party
repositories AFAIK. Maybe there are some good reasons, in which case
I'm interested in knowing them.
The dell-software repo
http://linux.dell.com/repo/software/
distributes openipmi, dcdbas, and dell_rbu for RHEL[34], SLES9, and
FC[34] because those distros didn't originally have them. We've since
gotten those driver into
kernel.org and therefore newer kernels and
distro versions, which has always been our goal all along - use DKMS
as a stop-gap until upstream and every distro kernel has a good-enough
version of each driver to not need to package them separately.
I'm glad for all the renewed interest, I had no idea how many people
were really packaging drivers using DKMS outside of Dell and our
immediate partners. And yes, I owe Jon Masters some more time getting
DKMS fully up to speed with the work he's been doing with
kerneldrivers.org and KMPs. I'm getting there, I promise!
Thanks,
Matt
--
Matt Domsch
Software Architect
Dell Linux Solutions
linux.dell.com &
www.dell.com/linux
Linux on Dell mailing lists @
http://lists.us.dell.com